'    ! 


J    -    /  J 


?Q 


:  E   . 


qr 

Cf 


Jto  iHf uwrtam 

Ir.  SUrtjarb  31 


R«T.    R.    J.    Cotter,    D.  D. 


THE    MAKING    OF 
TO-MORROW 

INTERPRETATIONS   OF   THE 
WORLD    TO-DAY 


BY 


Dean  of  the  Divinity  School  of  the  University  of  Chicago 


NEW  YORK:  EATON    &    MAINS 
CINCINNATI:  JENNINGS  &  GRAHAM 


CopyHght,  1913,  by 
SHAILER  MATHEWS 


TO 

G.  D.  R. 

COMRADE  IN 
A    GREAT  ADVENTURE 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface 7 

I.  THE  COMMON  LOT 

The  Man  in  the  Cab 11 

The  Gambling  Mania 15 

College  Athletics  as  a  School  of  Dishonesty 18 

Literature  and  the  Beast 24 

Endowing  a  Family 27 

The  Day  of  the  Farmer 32 

The  Call  of  the  Aboriginal 36 

Autobiography  at  the  Ball  Game 40 

Keep  the  Schoolhouse  Open 44 

Democracy  in  Education 48 

Do  We  Dare  Educate  Everybody? 54 

A  Lay  Sermon  to   Fathers 59 

Thanksgiving — Is  It  Hypocrisy? 64 

Our  Commercialized  Christmas 68 

II.  THE  CHTJRCH  AND  SOCIETY 

Are  We  Tolerant  or  Indifferent? 75 

Are  We  Ashamed  of  Immortality? 81 

Way  for  the   Leader! 85 

The  Christian  and  the  Changing  Order 90 

The  Church  and  the  Masses 95 

Blessed  are  the  Peacemakers 100 

The  Larger  Social  Service  of  the  Church 106 

After  the  Storm 110 

III.  THE  STIRRINGS  OF  A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE 

Have  We  Repudiated  Honor? 115 

The  New  Social  Conscience 120 

New-Fashioned   Honesty 124 

5 


6  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The  Appeal  to  Brute   Force 129 

Gentlemen  Poisoners 134 

Salvation   by  Senatorial  Courtesy 139 

The  Better  Side  of  Commercialism 144 

The  Luxury  of  War 149 

Practicing  National  Mind  Cure 163 

IV.  THE  EXTENSION  OF  DEMOCRACY 

Must  Democracy  Abdicate? 159 

The  Revolt  of  the  Plain  Citizen 164 

Rational  Jingoism 168 

Playing  with  Social  Discontent 172 

The  Charlatan  in  Reform 176 

Rebuilding  the  Nation  on  Interstate  Commerce 180 

Give  Us  Back  Our  Rivers! 182 

Where  is  the  West? 186 

Safeguarding  a  New  Epoch 190 


PREFACE 

PRACTICALLY  all  tHe  chapters  of  this 
little  book  appeared  in  their  original  form 
as  editorial  interpretations.  For  more  than 
eight  years,  while  editor  of  The  World 
To-Day,  I  was  obliged  to  study  carefully 
the  course  of  events  in  the  larger  world  of 
politics  and  social  evolution.  At  the  same 
time  I  was  endeavoring  to  teach  young  men 
and  women  the  meaning  of  religion. 

The  result  of  this,  at  first  sight,  incon- 
gruously diversified  life  was  to  deepen  the 
conviction  that  the  American  public  mind 
is  fundamentally  moral  and  that  it  is  de- 
veloping a  new  leadership  for  our  new 
Democracy. 

It  is  a  wonderful  period  through  which 
the  United  States  has  been  and  is  still 
passing,  and  these  brief  studies  of  the 
reconstructive  forces  and  attitudes  I  hope 
will  stimulate  religious  teachers  of  all  sorts 


8  PREFACE 

to  a  keener  interest  in  the  moral  and  reli- 
gious aspects  of  our  changing  order.  To 
see  and  exhibit  God's  working  in  social 
change  is  to  come  as  near  as  modern  men 
can  come  to  the  prophetic  office. 


I 

THE  COMMON  LOT 


THE  MAN  IN  THE  CAB 


you  saw  him  last  he  was  sitting 
quietly  in  his  seat  back  of  the  big 
boiler,  watching  the  crowd  hurry  down  the 
platform  to  business  and  friends  —  a  strong, 
unromantic  figure  in  oily  overalls.  Prob- 
ably you  did  not  give  him  a  second  glance. 

And  yet,  only  a  few  moments  since,  he 
had  held  your  life  and  hundreds  of  other 
lives  literally  in  his  hand. 

We  travel  so  much  that  we  forget  the 
men  who  make  travel  possible.  Yet  every 
click  of  the  car  wheels  is  eloquent  of  the 
trust  which  we  place  in  human  faithful- 
ness. A  rotten  tie,  an  ill-driven  spike,  a 
switch  set  wrong,  a  lamp  that  refuses  to 
burn,  a  confusion  of  orders,  any  one  of  these 
sends  scores  of  men  into  eternity. 

Men  say  that  they  travel  over  steel  rails. 
In  reality  they  travel  on  men's  consciences. 

*         fi         fi 

Engine-driving  makes  automobile-driving 

mere  play.     If  you  are  able  to  buy,  or  bor- 

11 


12       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

row  money  enough  to  buy,  an  automobile, 
you  may  have  the  joy  of  facing  death  wher- 
ever you  may  choose  and  the  policeman  is  not 
watching,  but  you  are  mercifully  prevented 
from  letting  many  others  share  your  fate. 

The  engineer  has  no  such  limitations. 
He  is  at  the  mercy  of  mankind,  nature,  and 
his  time-card;  but  a  trainload  of  people  is 
the  stake  for  which  he  plays. 

Of  himself  he  cannot  think. 

Face  to  face  with  the  inevitableness  of 

the  next  moment,  if  disaster  comes  through 

another's  carelessness,  he  must  be  the  first 

to  suffer.    If  he  himself  errs,  there  is  no  one 

-  to  share  the  blame. 

He  is  the  incarnation  of  responsibility^ 
that  can  neither  be  shared  nor  shifted 

/*         ,*         /* 

You  will  find  the  man  in  the  cab 
throughout  our  world.  He  stands  face  to 
I  face  with  responsibility,  sometimes  gaining 
honor  or^wealth,  but  always  at  the  cost  of 
being  master  of  the  lives  of  others  who 
trail  behind  him. 

It  is  a  lonesome  job. 
0  Lonesomeness    is   part   of   the   cost   of 


THE  COMMON  LOT  IS 

power.  The  higher  you  climb  the  less  can 
you  hope  for  companionship. 

The  heavier  and  the  more  immediate  the 
responsibility,  the  less  can  a  man  delegate 
his  tasks  or  escape  his  own  mistakes. 

The  private  soldier  can  always  share  in 
victories,  but  the  commanding  officer  alone 
bears  the  weight  of  defeat. 


The  average  man  seldom  thinks  of  the 
load  which  power  brings. 

The  captain  of  industry,  on  whose  fore- 
sight and  energy,  on  even  the  incidents  of 
whose  life,  the  prosperity  and  livelihood  of 
thousands  of  families  depend;  the  political 
leader  who  must  bear  the  brunt  of  defeat 
which  others  have  caused;  the  employer 
who  can  share  his  success  with  many,  but 
who  must  face  bankruptcy  alone — these  are 
no  mere  children  of  good  fortune.  Like  the 
man  in  the  cab,  they  stand  face  to  face 
with  responsibility,  burdened  with  the  fate 
of  many,  but  expecting  help  from  none. 

/*        t*        fi 
The  next  time  you  look  up  from  your 


14      THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

novel  to  complain  that  your  train  is  late, 
remember  the  man  in  the  cab. 

And  the  next  time  you  envy  the  man  of 
power  and  position,  think  of  the  loneliness 
of  his  responsibility,  the  friendliness  of  his 
success,  and  the  risk  he  faces  while  you  and 
those  like  you  are  at  ease. 


If  leadership  seems  easy,  just  try  being 
a  leader! 


\ 

THE  GAMBLING  MANIA 

A  MERICA  has  all  but  gone  mad  over 
-**•  gambling.  We  have  even  gone  so  far 
that  we  do  not  quite  know  what  gambling 
is.  Is  the  promoter  who  floats  an  over- 
capitalized corporation  a  gambler?  Is  the 
small  investor  a  gambler  who  margins  a 
few  shares  of  stock?  Is  the  poor  man  on  a 
salary  a  gambler  who  invests  a  few  dollars 
in  the  supposititious  dividends  of  a  mine? 
Is  the  tradesman  a  gambler  who  stretches 
his  credit  on  the  supposition  that  good 
times  will  continue  another  six  months? 

Let  us  not  split  hairs.  We  are  not  re- 
ferring to  the  spirit  of  speculation,  but  to 
gambling.  What  paper  does  not  publish 
its  records  or  betting  forms  of  the  races? 
What  drug  store  does  not  have  its  racing 
chart?  What  small  town  does  not  have 
its  contributors  to  some  racing  syndicate? 
Millions  of  dollars  are  staked  on  a  single 
race.  Boys  and  girls,  clerks  and  business 
men,  sports,  thieves,  and  church  members, 
all  alike,  are  joining  the  ranks  of  the 

15 


16       THE  MAKING  OP  TO-MORROW 

gambler  and  dance  together  toward  moral 
suicide. 

,*        *        ,* 

Sane  people  seem  mad  to  madmen,  con- 
scientious people  seem  hypocrites  to  gam- 

.  biers.  The  student  laughs  at  an  instructor 
who  advises  him  not  to  bet  on  ball  games; 

?  the  clerk  who  steals  money  to  play  the 
races  charges  his  fall  to  his  employer's 
failure  to  pay  him  proper  salary.  The 
man  who  plays  poker  and  the  woman  who 
plays  bridge  ridicule  the  friends  who  de- 
clare they  should  not  do  as  they  please 
with  their  own  money.  The  newspaper 
that  condemns  gambling  in  its  editorial 
columns  publishes  alluring  promises  of 
sudden  wealth  in  its  advertising  columns. 

,*        ,*        ?* 

Are  we  all  mad  together?  When  shall  we 
stop  offering  our  children  to  this  Moloch? 
Must  we  wait  for  commercial  depression  to 
learn  that  one  cannot  play  fast  and  loose 
with  right  and  wrong  without  finding  the 
moral  universe  taking  its  revenge? 

It  is  time  that  our  moral  teachers  en- 


THE  COMMON  LOT  17 

forced  the  lesson  that  young  men  and 
women  need  to  guard  themselves  against  a 
subtle  poison  they  will  find  in  literature 
and  even  in  friendships. 

If  we  are  to  have  a  clean  government,  we 
must  have  clean  men,  and  to  have  clean 
men  we  must  have  honest  men.  We  want 
something  greater  than  reform. 

We   want   a   cure   for   socialized   moral   ' 
insanity. 


COLLEGE  ATHLETICS  AS  A  SCHOOL 
OF  DISHONESTY 

are   suffering  from  acute  athletic 
mania.     A  day  when  more  people 
attend  base-ball  games  than  churches,  when 
the  professional  athlete  is  sure  of  a  better 
income    than    the    average    minister    or 
teacher,  when  crowds  of  twenty  to  thirty 
thousand  people  will  pay  more  freely  to  see 
a  match  than  to  read  a  book,  does  not  take 
anxious  thought  for  the  morrow  when  it 
will  awake.    It  is  time  something  should  be 
said  on  the  moral  aspect  of  the  case.    Any 
sensible  person  would  prefer  to  see  young 
men  devoted  to  sports  rather  than  to  dis- 
sipation.    The  ground  for  criticism  is  not, 
that  there  is  too  much  interest  in  athletics, 
but  that  dishonesty  is  taught  by  athletics  ! 
in  the  very  institutions  which  should  teach,1 
honesty  and  honor  —  the  colleges  and  the; 
preparatory  schools. 


Take   the   simple   matter   of   eligibility. 

18 


THE  COMMON  LOT  19 

The  provisions  governing  amateur  status 
and  the  scholarship  requirements  of  mem- 
bers of  college  teams  are  very  precise,  but 
they  are  not  carried  out  in  absolute  good 
faith.  Any  man  who  has  ever  been  upon 
a  board  of  athletics  knows  only  too  well 
the  endless  wrangling  which  prevails  be- 
tween colleges  over  this  point.  The  situa- 
tion is  undoubtedly  better  than  a  few  years 
since,  but  not  a  season  passes  that  prom- 
inent colleges  and  universities  are  not 
charged  with  practicing  deception  in  con- 
cealing facts,  in  changing  records,  or  in 
surreptitiously  offering  financial  induce- 
ments to  promising  athletes.  The  serious 
element  in  the  situation  is  not  that  the 
matter  is  public  scandal,  and  derogatory  to 
the  educational  institutions,  though  that  in 
itself  is  bad  enough.  Worse  than  this  dis- 
grace is  the  fact  that  young  men  in  our 
colleges  are  being  taught  that  it  is  per- 
missible to  evade  specific  laws  until  some 
one  objects.  Any  man  who  listens  to  the 
conversation  of  college  students  concerning 
the  eligibility  of  contestants  in  intercol- 
legiate meets  will  be  convinced  that  so 
far  from  being  trained  to  a  sensitive  honor 

'       ^•^"•^•^^^"-*"  ****^«»W^^»«^W*»MM««««^^««*^^^^^^ 


20       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

they  are  being  trained  to  look  wise  or  to 
laugh  at  conscienceless  cleverness.  Special 
pleadings  and  a  training  in  trickery  are  not 
lessons  that  should  be  taught  men  who  are 
to  be  molders  of  public  opinion. 


The  matter  is  possibly  worse  in  the  case 
of  preparatory  schools.  Every  teacher 
knows  that  one  of  the  most  serious  edu- 
cational problems  of  the  day  is  that  of 
athletics  in  such  schools.  Boys  ought  to 
play  games  and  ought  to  have  their  ath- 
letic contests  of  various  sorts,  but  they 
should  not  be  forced  into  training,  or  be 
carried  all  over  the  country  to  compete  in 
great  interscholastic  meetings.  But  this 
is  less  serious  than  the  moral  dangers  to 
which  good  athletes  in  secondary  schools 
are  exposed,  from  the  influences  brought  to 
bear  upon  them  to  attend  some  college. 
Some  such  influence  is  legitimate,  but  de- 
moralization is  the  inevitable  outcome  of 
the  underhand  methods  deliberately  used 
by  men  who  would  resent  bitterly  any 
accusation  of  dishonesty.  No  boy  can 
maintain  high  ideals  in  life  who  directly  or 


THE  COMMON  LOT  21 

indirectly  is  offered  secret  inducements  in 
the  way  of  board,  scholarships,  large  wages 
for  little  work,  at  some  college  where  he  is 
needed  on  some  team.  College  athletics  are 
most  desirable  sources  of  college  loyalty,  but 
as  long  as  they  lead  to  such  proceedings  they 
must  also  be  branded  as  occasions  of  bribery, 


It  is  not  mere  loyalty  to  one's  college 
that  leads  to  robbing  boys  in  schools  of 
their  honor  and  honesty.  Back  of  all  col- 
lege athletics  is  the  specter  of  the  gate 
receipts.  Without  them  there  would  be  no 
training  tables,  no  coaches  with  exorbitant 
wages,  no  army  of  rubbers,  no  extrava- 
gance in  expenditures,  no  quarrels  over 
percentages,  no  professionalism.  Large 
gate  receipts  are  ruining  amateur  sport  and 
contaminating  college  and  school  athletics. 
To  be  sure  of  them  a  college  must  win 
games.  To  win  games  one  must  send 
emissaries  with  words  of  honey  and  prom- 
ises of  "aid"  to  preparatory  schools.  There 
the  matter  is  in  a  nutshell:  money  made  to 
run  athletics;  athletics  run  to  make  money; 
money  used  too  in  underhanded  ways; 


22       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

boys  taught  dishonesty  the  moment  they 
can  catch  a  ball  or  buck  the  line.  The 
whole  proceeding  is  a  disgrace  to  American 
education. 

*         ^         ,* 

Can  we  bring  college  athletics  back  to 
true  sport  and  true  ideals  of  honor?  There 
are  two  ways,  and  only  two:  Put  them 

t  absolutely  under  the  control  of  the  faculty 
and  abolish  gate  receipts.  The  first  is 

*  feasible  in  any  institution;  only  it  must 
be  no  half-way  measure.  A  mere  faculty 
board  cannot  control  the  situation  as  long 
as  they  do  not  also  control  expenditures. 
The  hired  "coach"  and  student  manager 
must  go.  Directly  or  indirectly,  they  are 
at  the  bottom  of  most  of  the  iniquity. 
Athletics  should  be  endowed,  not  commer- 
cialized. If  they  cannot  exist  in  their 
present  shape  without  huge  gate  receipts, 
let  them  be  simplified.  The  loss  of  a  few 
rubbers  and  of  a  training  table  where  men 
only  make  believe  pay  their  board  will  be 
a  blessing.  Wherever  athletics  have  been 
made  an  integral  part  of  the  college  course 
they  have  been  cleaner,  and  their  influence 


THE  COMMON  LOT  23 

upon  preparatory  students  has  been  less 
harmful.  The  fact  that  colleges  all  over 
the  country  are  adopting  this  method 
speaks  well  for  the  future.  It  is  to  be 
devoutly  hoped  that  the  preparatory 
schools  will  also  take  the  same  steps  and 
remove  the  serious  dangers  to  which  ath- 
letics in  their  institutions  are  exposed. 

Once  treat  athletics  from  an  educa- 
tional point  of  view,  and  it  will  be  possible 
to  bring  into  them  some  of  the  ideals  of 
education.  Leave  them  as  a  feebly  regu- 
lated part  of  undergraduate  enthusiasm  and 
irresponsibility,  and  their  history  will  be 
marked  with  the  trickery  and  discreditable 
quarrels  with  which  their  past  has  been 
disgraced. 


LITERATURE  AND  THE  BEAST 


is  the  day  of  books,  and,  to  speak 
candidly,  of  rather  mediocre  books. 
Yet  the  output  is  not  without  its  charac- 
teristics. Any  attentive  student  of  litera- 
ture must  have  noticed  one  fact  of 
importance:  our  literature  is  growing 
animal. 

/*        *        ,# 

It  is  not  merely  that  the  note  of  genuine 
romance  is  dying  away,  to  be  replaced 
by  the  beatification  of  blood-letting.  The 
modern  historical  romance,  coming  as  it 
does  so  largely  from  the  hands  of  young 
women,  may  very  well  be  trusted  to  return 
some  day  from  Aceldama.  And  even 
blood-letting  is  not  always  elemental 
savagery. 

The  discouraging  trait  in  modern  litera- 
ture is  not  descended  from  romance,  but 
from  anthropology.  The  mystery  of  life 
and  love  has  been  dispelled  by  the  vigorous 

young  men  who  are  setting  the  pace  in 

24 


THE  COMMON  LOT  25 

novel-writing.     Their  men  and  women  do 
not  fall  in  love  any  more.    They  mate. 

The  elemental  passions  which  these  ama- 
teur sociologists  imagine  belonged  to  the 
cave  man  are  found  and  described  among 
the  men  and  women  of  to-day's  world.  In 
comparison  with  this  latest  valuation  of 
personality,  Rousseau's  "natural  man"  was 
a  gentleman  and  a  scholar. 


This  conquest  of  literature  by  animalism    v/ 
is  interesting  from  another  angle.    Many  of    ^ 
its   agents   are   socialists,   and   their   work 
may  fairly  be  interpreted  as  a  prophecy  of 
what   we   may   expect   in   art   when   their 
Utopia  is  realized.    Idealism  may  be  "bour- 
geois," but  it  certainly  is  not  brutal.     If 
"paganism"  means  what  this  new  literary 
output  emphasizes,  we  choose  to  become 
"Philistines." 

To  drop  this  jargon:  We  will  not  be- 
lieve that  we  are  only  clever  animals  capa- 
ble of  producing  limitless  wealth.  A  man 
is  a  creature  of  dreams  and  visions,  as  well 
as  of  economic  vigor  and  animal  passions.  4 
Let  us  hope  literary  persons,  even  though 


26       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

socialists,  will  remember  this  fact.     For  if 
matters  are  carried  much  further,  fiction  ] 

j  will  become  a  branch  of  physiological  psy-  I 

^chology — only  less  reserved. 


ENDOWING  A  FAMILY 

\\  7"E  have  had  our  discussion  concerning 
*  *  tainted  money.  It  is  time  we  con- 
sidered the  endowment  of  families.  Recent 
events  exhibit  the  new  tendency  in  Amer- 
ican life  to  establish  a  parasitic  class  com- 
posed of  descendants  of  men  who  have  ac- 
cumulated fortunes.  These  fortunes  are  no 
longer  distributed  among  a  man's  heirs,  but 
are  kept  intact  and  placed  in  the  hands  of 
trust  companies  for  administration.  The 
beneficiaries  face  no  responsibility  of 
wealth,  but  simply  receive  the  whole  or  a 
portion  of  the  fund's  income.  In  one  case 
three  young  children  have  approximately 
the  same  endowment  as  that  of  Harvard, 
Yale,  Columbia,  and  Chicago  universities 
combined. 


It  is  natural  to  want  to  grow  rich.  Most 
of  us  are  doing  the  best  we  can  to  gratify 
this  ambition.  It  is  natural  also  to  want 
to  found  a  family.  But  at  this  point  the 

27 


28       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

claims  of  the  commonwealth  ought  not  to 
be  forgotten.  Waiving  all  matters  of  ab- 
stract ethics,  a  fortune  running  into  the 
millions  could  never  be  accumulated  in 

I  the  lifetime  of  a  single  person  except  by 
the  assistance  of  society  at  large.  A  farmer 
dies  a  multi-millionaire  because  the  growth 
of  population  has  made  his  farm  the  center 
of  a  great  city.  He  has  not  created  his 
fortune,  he  has  simply  been  a  silent  partner 
with  society.  The  enormous  increment  is 
unearned.  Similar,  though  not  necessarily 
to  the  same  degree,  is  the  case  of  huge  cor- 
porations who  grow  rich  by  exploiting  social 
conditions.  Taxes  do  not  begin  to  represent 
the  silent  partner's  share  in  the  profits. 

There  are  some  rich  men  who  see  this 
and  are  endeavoring  to  meet  equitably  the 
claims  of  a  partner  who  has  done  so  much 
for  them.  However  much  their  business 
methods  may  be  subjects  of  fair  criti- 
cism, simple  justice  demands  that  their 
sense  of  social  responsibility  should  be  recog- 
nized. 


The  next  step  in  our  financial  evolution 


THE  COMMON  LOT  29 

is  the  concentration  of  wealth  in  trust 
companies.  An  enormous  percentage  of  the 
productive  wealth  of  the  United  States  is 
now  held  by  a  small  proportion  of  our  citi- 
zens. Should  each  one  of  these  citizens  at 
death — and  this  is  to-day's  drift — provide 
that  for  the  next  thirty  or  forty  years  his 
wealth  should  be  handled  by  trust  com-  V 
panics  for  the  benefit  of  his  descendants,  it 
would  follow  inevitably  that  a  large  pro- 
portion of  our  national  capital  would  be 
concentrated  under  the  control  of  a  half 
dozen  financial  institutions.  There  may  be 
benefits  attending  such  a  concentration,  but 
the  most  conservative  of  us  can  see  that 
its  dangers  are  inevitable  and  tremendous. 
With  all  respect  for  the  ability  and  honesty 
of  these  companies,  no  single  group  of  men 
is  capable  of  administering  such  power.  No 
group  of  men  ought  to  have  such  power  to 
administer. 

We  used  to  think  that  by  the  process  of 
division  great  fortunes  would  be  dissipated 
and  so  the  financial  equilibrium  of  the 
nation  in  a  large  way  be  maintained. 
Under  the  new  condition  of  affairs  such 
equilibrium  is  becoming  improbable.  Dis- 


50       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

sipation  to  any  considerable  extent  is  daily 
less  possible  except  as  it  is  involved  in  a 
universal  financial  distress  brought  about 

1  by  the  excessive  concentration  of  wealth. 
The  capital  of  the  nation  is  coming  to  be 
administered  by  those  to  whom  it  does  not 
belong,  while  its  real  owners,  without  re- 
sponsibility and  without  power,  an  untitled 
aristocracy  of  idleness,  spend  their  income 

I  in  accordance  with  an  ever-exaggerated 
standard  of  luxury. 


The  situation  plays  into  the  hands  of 
socialism.  Short  of  that,  two  remedies 
seem  possible,  and,  theoretically  at  least, 
feasible. 

The  first  is  the  repeal  of  laws  permitting 
the  formation  of  trusts  of  more  than  a  few 
years'  duration,  thus  forcing  the  responsi- 
bilities  of  wealth  upon  those  who  inherit 

it. 

The  second  is  the  establishment  of  a 
rapidly  progressive  inheritance  tax  which 
shall  assure  the  public's  large  participation 
in  ~  all  huge  fortunes  at  the  death  of  their 
creators.  •> 


THE  COMMON  LOT  31 

The  American  people  has  no  desire  to 
destroy  incentives  to  the  creation  of  wealth, 
or  to  deprive  the  family  of  a  rich  man  of  a 
generous  share  of  his  fortune;  but  the  es-  i 

tablishment  of  an  endowed  class  of  idlers 

•  «•  i>ii  n 

is   contrary   to   the   American    spirit   and 
dangerous  to  American  institutions. 


THE  DAY  OF  THE  FARMER 

OPRING  is  the  season  when  the  primitive 
*-*  man  in  us  wants  to  dig  in  the  ground. 
If  we  live  in  flats  we  put  flower-boxes  on 
the  back  railing.  If  we  have  a  back  yard 
we — or  our  wives — plant  flowers  in  a  rib- 
bon of  ground  along  the  back  fence. 

For  what  man  of  us  has  not  wanted  to  be 
a  farmer? 

The  average  city  man,  in  early  summer, 
plans  for  that  Utopia  which  is  to  be  his 
when  he  has  made  enough  money  to  buy  a 
little  place  not  too  far  from  some  Broadway 
and  can  settle  down  to  the  companionship 
of  a  horse,  a  cow,  some  chickens,  and  an 
occasional  grandchild. 


To  most  of  us  farming  is  a  remarkably 
simple  matter.  You  break  up  the  ground, 
you  smooth  it  down;  you  put  the  seed  in; 
then  you  smooth  it  some  more;  then  you 
sit  in  a  hammock  until  it  is  time  to  grow 
rich  selling  your  grain  to  the  commission 

32 


THE  COMMON  LOT  33 

merchants.  How  much  easier  and  how 
much  more  attractive  that  seems  than  the 
daily  routine  of  the  office  or  shop!  At  any 
rate,  every  man  who  never  lived  on  a  farm 
is  convinced  that  he  would  make  a  good 
farmer ! 

All  of  which  optimism  is  subject  to  ex- 
pensive disillusionment.  Your  optimistic 
amateur  agriculturist — farmer  is  too  sim- 
ple a  word  for  him — finds  that  he  is  fighting 
a  losing  battle  with  bugs,  droughts,  grass- 
hoppers, rain,  and  his  alleged  unsophisti- 
cated neighbors. 

He  needs  to  have  his  farm  endowed  if  he 
expects  to  be  able  to  afford  company  din- 
ners during  the  winter. 

*        f*         fi 

But  the  farmer  who  is  not  an  amateur 
is  a  really  increasing  factor  in  to-day's 
life.  In  fact,  farming  is  rapidly  becoming 
one  of  the  professions.  We  have  our  agri- 
cultural schools,  just  as  we  have  our  law 
schools. 

It  is  getting  to  be  a  business  as  well. 
Farmers  have  their  trusts,  like  other 
manufacturers. 


34       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

It  is  a  far  cry  from  the  New  England 
farmer,  trying  to  arrange  an  exploded 
granite  quarry  into  a  stone  wall  that  he 
may  have  room  in  which  to  plant  his  crop, 
to  that  master  of  capital,  science  and  black 
earth  ten  feet  deep  who  plows  with  a  trac- 
tion engine  and  reaps  with  a  ten-horse  team. 


And  between  these  two  types  of  farmers 
the  drift  is  steadily  toward  the  latter. 

The  comic  paper  does  not  laugh  at  the 
"granger"  as  frequently  as  it  used  to 
laugh.  It  wants  his  subscription. 

The  capitalist  does  not  foreclose  mort- 
gages on  the  prairie  farm  now.  He  borrows 
money  of  its  owner. 

And,  what  is  vastly  more  important,  the 
entire  country  looks  with  a  respect  border- 
ing upon  apprehension  on  this  new  type  of 
American  who  has  decided  views  on  rail- 
roads, trusts,  and,  in  fact,  on  every  sub- 
ject, from  the  "greenbug"  to  the  lecturer 
at  his  Chautauqua. 


This  rise  of  the  farmer  into  national  sig- 


THE  COMMON  LOT  35 

nificance  is  welcome  in  view  of  the  inun- 
dation of  great  cities  by  immigrants  who 
have  significance  only  en  masse. 

The  farm  is  the  nursery  of  individualism. 
If  you  are  a  cliff-dweller  in  the  city  send  f 
your  boy  there  next  summer,  and  let  him 
see  what  it  means  to  create  wealth  with 
the  help  of  nature  rather  than  with  the 
ticker.  You  will  help  make  him  a  better 
American. 


THE  CALL  OF  THE  ABORIGINAL 

THEY  tell  us  that  spring  and  summer 
are  the  birthdays  of  revolution.  It 
certainly  seems  likely.  Most  holidays 
which  celebrate  revolutions  occur  about 
this  time  of  year,  and  when  nature  begins 
to  put  forth  signs  of  new  life,  human 
nature  too  begins  to  be  restless. 

And  everybody  remembers  what  hap- 
pens to  a  young  man's  fancy  in  the  spring. 

It  is  only  a  part  of  the  general  situation 

that  in  these  days  most  of  us  feel  the  pull 

of  the  aboriginal  within  us.     From  June 

till  Thanksgiving  scratch  any  civilized  man 

x  and  you  will  catch  a  savage. 

And  what  is  more,  he  will  not  be 
ashamed. 

We  want  to  get  outdoors.  Saturday 
afternoons  come  all  too  seldom  for  golf 
and  tennis  and  baseball.  Even  if  our 
dignity  or  our  avoirdupois  prevents  our 
being  athletic  in  our  own  persons,  we  like 
to  sit  on  the  bleachers  and  watch  our 
substitutes  give  us  the  excitement  of  sport 

36 


THE  COMMON  LOT  37 

without  its  exertions.  The  average  Amer- 
ican may  be  reducing  athletics  to  a  seden- 
tary occupation,  but  even  that,  when 
business  and  wife  will  permit,  is  an  outdoor 
occupation. 

He  gets  room  to  shout. 


Then,  too,  as  winter  passes  we  want  to 
dig  in  the  ground.  Children  want  sand 
hills  and  their  parents  want  flower  beds. 

True,  the  attack  of  ground-digging  is 
not  long-lived,  especially  among  men.  As 
in  primitive  times  it  took  squaws  to  plant 
the  maize,  it  takes  women  to  make  back 
yards  and  flower  boxes  on  apartment-house 
railings  blossom  like  the  rose. 

None  the  less,  this  desire  to  grub  comes 
back  to  us  as  the  habit  of  turning  around 
to  avoid  snakes  before  he  goes  to  sleep 
comes  back  to  a  lap  dog. 


We  want  to  go  fishing.  Not  so  much  for 
the  sake  of  getting  the  fish  as  for  the  fun 
of  trying  to  get  them.  It  is  really  aston- 
ishing how  uneasy  a  man  gets  in  his  office 


38       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

or  his  shop  when  he  knows  that  the .  ice 
has  gone  out  of  the  ponds  and  lakes  and 
streams  up  in  the  woods. 

Bronchitis  and  sore  throat  and  rheuma- 
tism and  pneumonia  may  follow  him  like 
dull  care  the  horseman,  but  he  grows 
restless  until  he  finds  himself  shivering  and 
wet-footed  by  the  side  of  a  camp  fire  or  an 
airtight  stove  in  some  refuge  for  "sports." 

And  each  new  year  he  refuses  to  learn 
caution  from  the  experiences  of  the  past. 
,  For  we  grow  strong  by  making  believe 
we  are  primitive. 


Pale  and  anemic  imitation  of  this  up- 
rising of  the  aboriginal  within  us  is  that 
which  convention  offers  under  the  name  of 
"vacation" — a  wabbling  in  chairs  on  hotel 
porches;  a  struggle  to  imagine  ourselves 
happy  in  stuffy  bedrooms;  a  desperate 
effort  to  give  or  get  taken  in  marriage;  a 
yearly  fortnight  of  self-delusion  when  we 
think  we  are  getting  rested  because  we  are 
more  uncomfortable  than  we  are  at  home. 

No,  there  is  no  recreation  in  being  more 
conventional  than  we  ordinarily  are.  You 


THE  COMMON  LOT  39 

cannot  enrich  a  field  with  a  lawnmower; 
you  need  a  subsoil  plow.  And  the  annual 
recurrence  of  this  hungering  for  the  primi- 
tive relations  in  life  is  evidence  that 
humanity  has  depths  worth  tilling. 

A  real  vacation  is  a  sort  of  subsoil  plow- 
ing. A  man  calls  upon  the  elemental 
within  him  to  yield  new  fertility  to  the 
ordinary  life  of  the  year's  routine. 

It  is  not  a  mere  matter  of  camping-out 
or  farming  or  tramping.  It  is  not  even 
exercise,  rest,  and  a  better  digestion.  It  is 
a  getting  of  one's  self  back  to  the  elemental 
things  of  life  that  are  to  be  found  only  on 
the  farm,  by  the  sea,  and  in  the  woods.  A 
man  finds  himself  healthier  and  saner  be- 
cause he  has  for  a  few  days  reverted  to 
that  intimacy  with  nature  which  modern 
improvements  have  all  but  made  us  believe 
was  barbarism. 

A  few  weeks  of  not   too  strenuous  sav-  / 
agery   will   make   you   the   better   able   to 
endure     the     storms     and     buffetings     of 
civilization. 


AUTOBIOGRAPHY  AT  THE  BALL 
GAME 

A  S  summer  draws  on,  we  must  go  on 
**-  thinking  about  a  good  many  matters, 
which  tend  to  make  us  serious.  But  our 
real  souls  are  in  baseball.  That,  barring 
the  short  and  acute  attack  of  graduations, 
is  about  all  the  average  American  can  find 
really  worth  thinking  about  after  the  days 
grow  longer. 

Fortunately,  there  is  plenty  of  time  to 
go  to  the  game. 

,*         ,#         ,* 

We  love  the  game  for  what  it  is,  but  we 
love  it  quite  as  much  as  a  form  of  auto- 
biography. For  every  man  of  us  has 
played  baseball,  and  every  other  man  of 
us  secretly  cherishes  the  belief  that  if  we 
had  not  gone  into  law  or  business  or 
teaching  or  insurance,  we  too  might  have 
been  the  idol  of  the  "fan"  and  the  terror 
of  the  umpire. 

It  all  comes  back  to  you  as  you  watch 

40 


THE  COMMON  LOT  41 

the  pitchers  warming  up.  You  are  back 
again  on  the  vacant  lot.  Boys  you  had 
long  forgotten,  suddenly  are  alive  again — 
Bricktop  and  Fatty  and  Stuffy  and  Jim 
reach  out  from  the  long  ago  and  grip  your 
heart.  Where  are  they  now  and  what 
are  they  doing?  Long  hits  which  set  your 
side  shouting  and  the  "mud  larks"  tum- 
bling into  cellars  of  houses  burned  in  the 
Great  Fire,  free  fights  between  the  catcher 
and  the  runner  over  an  untouched  base, 
disjointed  thumbs  that  had  to  be  pulled 
in — that  all  is  real  again! 

,*         #         # 

And  then  you  are  back  in  college  with 
the  air  filled  with  the  cheers  of  the  massed 
rooters,  the  president  with  teeth  chatter- 
ing in  his  fear  lest  a  lost  game  should  mean 
a  loss  of  freshmen  in  the  fall,  the  line  of 
town  girls — not  yet  college  widows — watch- 
ing your  every  play,  the  madness  of 
victory  while  the  old  bell  rang  itself  off  its 
bearings — yes,  you  were  a  part  of  it  all! 

#        fi        fi 
True,  you  caught  fouls  on  the  bounce 


42       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

and  called  for  a  "low  ball"  and  waited  for 
the  pitcher  to  throw  seven  balls  before 
you  took  your  base;  you  knew  nothing  of 
squeeze  plays  and  bunts.  But  you  caught 
the  ball  in  your  hands  and  not  in  a  mat- 
tress, and  after  two  strikes  you  came  up 
under  the  bat  without  cushions  and  shin 
protectors,  and  you  are  proud  of  the  swol- 
len joint  that  gives  you  the  opportunity 
to  tell  your  neighbor  on  the  bleacher  of 
the  great  play  for  which  it  was  the  penalty. 

fi         /*         f* 

And  so  we  middle-aged  men  who  could 
not  run  around  the  bases  without  calling 
in  the  doctor,  who  would  be  terrorized  by 
pitching  we  used  to  despise,  who  would 
flee  a  grounder  and  misjudge  a  fly — we 
who  are  growing  a  trifle  stout  in  our  pros- 
perity live  our  youth  over  again  on  the 
bleachers. 

The  younger  generation  listens  conde- 
scendingly to  our  reminiscences  and  thinks 
of  us  as  sedate,  sedentary  suppliers  of 
house  rent  and  pocket  money.  These 
strapping  young  sons  of  ours,  with  their 
track  teams,  their  football,  and  their 


THE  COMMON  LOT  43 

coaches  —  they  cannot  understand  this  re- 
version to  enthusiasm  over  a  game  which 
they  watch  critically  and  discuss  in  terms 
we  are  ashamed  to  ask  them  to  define.  But 
to  us  it  is  a  stirring  of  old  adventuresome- 
ness  and  we  go  home,  hoarse,  sunburned,  and 
tired,  but  having  turned  back  the  wheels  of 
time  for  a  blessed  couple  of  hours. 


They  tell  us  we  must  play  golf  and  may 
play  tennis  if  we  do  not  play  too  fiercely  ; 
that  work  with  the  pulleys,  and,  safest  of 
all,  massage,  are  the  ideal  exercise  for  men 
who  dwell  in  offices. 

But  we  know  better  and  go  to  the  ball 
game.  For  there  flows  still  the  Fountain 
of  our  Youth. 


KEEP  THE  SCHOOLHOUSE  OPEN 

A  MERICA  has  two  recurrent  crises  — 
•**•  the  presidential  campaign  and  vaca- 
tion. At  first  sight  it  would  seem  as  if  the 
former  were  the  more  important.  It  is 
certainly  important  enough,  but  in  the 
long  perspective  a  vacation  is  almost  ter- 
rifying to  anyone  but  an  irrepressible 
optimist.  For  vacations  help  or  hurt  the 
citizens  of  to-morrow. 


We  do  not  take  the  matter  very  seriously. 

Of  course  those  of  us  who  are  sufficiently 
well  to  do  send  our  children  to  camps  and 
farms  and  grandparents  and  other  sub- 
stitutes for  parents.  But  no  matter  how 
great  the  number  of  such  fortunate  per- 
sons is,  it  is  all  but  infinitesimal  in  com- 
parison with  the  army  of  those  who  can  do 
little  or  nothing  for  their  children  and  are 
not  wise  enough  to  do  even  the  little  they 
might. 

Our  society  is  so  broken  up  into  social 

44 


THE  COMMON  LOT  45 

compartments  that  she  is  a  rare  woman 
and  he  a  rarer  man  who  stops  to  think  of 
the  millions  of  boys  and  girls  who  during 
the  summer  months  will  have  broken 
training  and  will  be  left  practically  to 
their  own  devices  and  the  influence  of 
those  who  know  little  and  care  less  about 
the  responsibilities  of  citizenship. 

/*        f*        t* 

Why  should  our  schools  be  closed  during 
the  summer? 

Is  it  to  give  the  teachers  a  vacation? 
They  certainly  need  it,  but  could  not 
substitutes  be  found? 

Is  it  for  the  sake  of  economy  ?  What  worse 
economy  is  there  than  that  which  provides 
conditions  which  not  only  lead  to  the 
tremendous  expense  of  courts  and  re- 
formatories, but  to  the  infinitely  greater 
cost  of  lives  that  have  been  ruined  through 
that  mischief  which  Satan  never  forgets  to  / 
find  for  idle  hands? 

,*         fi         # 

Boys  and  girls  might  be  injured  by  a 
twelve  months'  application  to  books? 


46       THE  MAKING  OP  TO-MORROW 

There  are  other  things  than  books  in  our 
education.  The  vacation  school  should 
teach  something  else  than  winter  school. 

Why  not  teach  a  trade?  or  play? 

At  any  rate,  boys  and  girls  ought  to  be 
kept  off  the  street. 

And  it  makes  no  difference  whether  the 
street  is  in  the  city  or  in  the  small  town. 
A  good  many  of  us  think  that  the  small- 
town street  is  even  more  demoralizing 
than  the  city  street. 


Notwithstanding  all  our  talk  about  the 
new  education,  our  schools  still  can  be 
improved. 

But  the  reform  that  is  needed  is  not  so 
much  in  the  curriculum  as  in  the  concep- 
tion of  the  very  purpose  of  school.  It  is 
all  very  well  to  discuss  "Frills"  and  the 
"Three  R's,"  but  let  us  open  our  eyes  to  . 
something  more  fundamental.  The  wel- 
fare of  the  community  demands  training 
in  self-restraint  and  plain  decency. 


When    that   happy   day   for   which    we 


THE  COMMON  LOT  47 

look  dawns  and  we  all  come  to  our  senses, 
we  shall  see  that  the  duty  of  the  State  is 
not  to  teach  boys  and  girls  for  nine  months 
in  the  year  and  then  turn  them  loose  for 
three  months;  we  shall  see  to  it  that  if 
fathers  and  mothers  forsake  their  children 
then  the  State  shall  take  them  up — into 
schools,  not  jails. 

If  it  is  the  duty  of  the  school  to  keep 
growing  children  from  bad  influences  in 
the  winter,  it  is  even  more  its  duty  to 
keep  children  from  evil  in  the  summer. 

The  closed  schoolhouse  is  a  standing 
monument  to  an  imperfect  education.  It 
is  a  guidepost  to  crime. 


DEMOCRACY  IN  EDUCATION 

YEARLY  summer,  and  July  in  particular, 
-*— ^  has  come  to  be  a  time  of  educational 
agitation.  To-day  as  never  before  teachers 
have  abandoned  vacation  to  become  stu- 
dents again  in  summer  schools  and  assem- 
blies. There  never  was  a  time  when  there 
was  such  universal  desire  to  learn  and  to 
teach. 

It  was  not  so  long  ago  that  an  education 
was  a  .class  distinction.  Anything  beyond 
what  could  be  taught  in  the  common 
school  or  an  occasional  high  school  was 
regarded  as  the  peculiar  property  of  the 
so-called  learned  professions.  Business  and 
farming  were  not  judged  compatible  with 
anything  approaching  a  liberal  education. 
The  college  man  was  an  aristocrat. 

The  same  aristocratic  conception  of  edu- 
cation was  even  more  pronounced  in  the 
case  of  the  professional  scholar.  Nothing 
|  was  scientific  that  was  interesting.  A  man 
who  would  write  a  readable  book  was 
branded  as  a  mere  popularizer.  Your  col- 

48 


THE  COMMON  LOT  49 

lege  professor  might  not  have  been  very 
well  paid,  but  what  he  lacked  in  income 
was  more  than  made  good  by  his  con- 
sciousness  of  superiority  to  the  Philistine. 


The  last  ten  or  fifteen  years  have 
changed  all  this.  The  Brahmin  caste  of 
New  England,  which  was  imitated  with 
greater  or  less  success  all  over  the  country, 
has  lost  its  sacred  prerogatives.  Member- 
ship in  societies  that  demand  registered 
pedigree  has  replaced  it.  The  change  is 
eloquent.  Our  aristocrats  of  learning  used 
to  be  known  by  their  diplomas.  Our  new 
aristocrats  of  birth  are  known  by  their 
buttons  and  badges. 


There  are,  and  always  will  be,  let  us 
hope,  men  who  know  more  than  other 
people.  This  would  be  a  very  poor  world 
to  live  in  if  we  were  all  equally  wise.  We 
need  men  who  are  specialists  in  order  to 
help  those  of  us  who  are  not  specialists  to 
a  realizing  sense  of  omniscience.  But  out- 
side of  university  circles  we  do  not  expect 


50       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

them  to  become  an  aristocracy.  Nowadays 
any  man  or  woman  can  be  educated.  In 
fact,  it  is  hard  to  escape  an  education. 
The  columns  of  our  papers  are  full  of 
advertisements  of  courses  given  by  corre- 
spondence. All  over  the  country  there  are 
Chautauqua  and  similar  reading  classes, 
assemblies  more  or  less  educational  in 
character,  university  extension  lectures, 
women's  clubs,  men's  clubs,  and  free 
libraries.  That  university  is  an  exception 
that  does  not  have  its  summer  session.  It 
never  was  true  that  poor  men  could  not 
go  through  college  if  they  wished  to,  but 
iin  these  times  it  is  easier  for  a  poor  boy 
i  to  spend  four  years  in  college  than  it  is 
for  him  to  work  at  a  trade. 

*         ^         ,# 

The  leaders  in  this  democratizing  of  edu- 
cation have  never  received  the  apprecia- 
tion due  them.  The  men  who  began  the 
Chautauqua  system,  the  men  who  insti- 
tuted the  correspondence  courses,  the  early 
university  extension  lectures,  all  have  had 
to  endure  the  contempt  or  the  pity  of 
those  who  were  making  education  the  basis 


THE  COMMON  LOT  51 

of  a  quasi-aristocracy.  Yet  they  persisted. 
Thousands  upon  thousands  of  plain  men 
and  women  were  given  opportunities  to 
come  in  touch  with  the  better  things  in 
life.  It  is  hard  for  us  to  realize  abstractly 
just  what  this  meant,  but  we  can  begin  to 
realize  it  when  we  recall  that  those  who 
are  now  crowding  our  schools  and  colleges 
are  the  children  of  a  generation  that  be- 
longed to  Chautauqua  circles. 


It  is  true  that  to  a  large  degree  the  first 
enthusiasm  for  certain  forms  of  this  popu- 
lar study  has  spent  itself,  but  it  has  not 
been  dissipated.  It  has  been  built  into  the 
very  structure  of  American  life.  Thanks 
to  it,  the  time  is  forever  past  when  occupa- 
tions can  of  themselves  shut  out  men  and 
women  from  the  world  of  literature.  The 
learning  of  this  new  educational  democracy 
is  untechnical,  and  in  the  eyes  of  a  profes- 
sional scholar  is  superficial;  but  what  col- 
lege graduate  knows  very  much  about  the 
things  he  studied  in  his  classes?  About 
the  first  lesson  a  teacher  learns  is  that  his 
successes  cannot  be  measured  by  what  his 


52       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

students  remember.  It  is  the  man  that 
counts.  His  interests,  the  horizon  of  his 
life,  his  sympathies — these  embody  the 
true  residuum  of  study. 

fi         #         # 

College  education  is  no  longer  a  door 
simply  into  the  learned  professions.  Let 
us  be  thankful  for  that.  But  let  us  be 
doubly  thankful  that  up  and  down  our 
country,  in  little  towns  as  well  as  cities, 
on  farms  as  well  as  in  offices  and  studies,  ,  / 
there  are  thousands  who  have  fy|  | fotfirest 
in  the  things  which  really  make  life  some- 
thing better  than  a  struggle  for  existence. 
As  education  has  ceased  to  be  aristocratic, 
and  has  become  democratic,  life  has  grown 
the  richer,  public  sentiment  has  grown  the 
higher.  A  few  years  more  and  all  this  work 
will  have  borne  still  nobler  fruit.  To  a 
large  degree  we  are  still  educating  people 
away  from  their  early  surroundings.  What 
the  next  few  years  must  do  and  will  do  is 
to  educate  them  in  their  surroundings.  We 
may  well  risk  the  dangers  which  are  said 
to  be  inherent  in  superficial  learning  for 
the  blessings  of  the  larger  outlook  and  the 


THE  COMMON  LOT  53 

more  spiritual  sympathies  which  have  come 

from  this  new  education. 

I     If  we  would  preserve  our  democracy,  we 

jmust  educate  our  democrats. 


DO  WE  DARE  EDUCATE  EVERY- 
BODY? 

\  \  7ITH  the  coming  of  autumn  the  United 
*  *  States  betakes  itself  to  education. 
There  is  no  town  so  poor  that  it  will  not 
see  its  schoolhouse  open  and  its  boys  and 
girls  taking  up  again  the  routine  of  study. 
In  the  grade  school,  in  the  high  school,  in 
the  college  and  in  the  university  thousands 
of  young  people  from  all  ranks  of  society 
will  begin  anew  their  preparation  for  the 
conduct  of  life. 

Nothing  yields  itself  more  readily  to 
rhetoric,  and  nothing  is  fraught  with  larger 
consequence  to  the  republic.  Why  should 
we  educate  everybody?  Why  do  we  pour 
out  money  to  educate  our  own  and  other 
people's  children?  Is  it  that  we  may  in- 
sure a  race  of  cultured  people?  That  is 
what  education — at  least  the  higher  educa- 
tion— meant  a  few  years  since.  Beyond  the 
rudiments  of  reading,  writing,  and  arith- 
metic boys  and  girls  studied  almost  noth- 
g  that  could  be  used  after  school.  We 

54 


THE  COMMON  LOT  55 

taught  them  Latin,  which  they  would  never 
read;  algebra,  with  which  they  would  never 
[calculate;  physiology,  whose  rules  they 
would  not  observe;  literature,  which  they 
refused  to  read.  Results  were  unavoidable. 

.?  |         |     •*!    •••••!•!«  I>.^M^»^^ 

The  cultured  classes  were  the  well-to-do 
classes.  The  poor  had  no  share  in  what 
passed  as  education. 


We  are  changing  all  this.  We  believe  in 
the  education  of  the  hands  as  well  as  of 
the  mind.  We  believe  that  a  boy  should 
be  taught  to  be  useful  as  well  as  ac- 
comjglished;  that  a  girl  should  learn  in 
school  that  which  she  does  not  need  to 
forget  in  the  home.  Education  is  looking 
toward  specialized  efficiency. 


Perhaps  this  is  wise;  perhaps  it  is  not 
wise.     This  is  not  the  question  we  would 
raise.    That  question  is:   Is  America  ready 
to  face  the  consequences  of  this  universal  * 
x  education  for  actual  life?     Culture  is  es-  I 
sentially  gurgoseless;  education  is  purpose- 
ful.    But  to  have  a  purpose  means  that  a 


56       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

generation  is  dissatisfied  with  its  present. 
To  arouse  an  ambition  in  a  generation  and  to 
attempt  to  give  that  generation  larger  self- 
control  is  also  to  arouse  in  it  ...discontent, 

An  educated  people  can  never  be  con- 
Y  tent  to  be  contented.     Individuals  may  be 
indifferent,  but  a  society  will  be  intent. 

And  with  this  discontent  comes  a  desire 
to  change,  to  improve,  to  equalize  one's 
lot  with  that  of  another;  to  increase  one's 
own  privileges,  and  to  deprive  another  of 
those  which  seem  unjustly  his.     No  won-] 
der  some  countries  have  been  so  much  in-' 
terror    of   popular    education.      The    priv- 
1  ileged   class   preferred   an   ignorant   under  • 
class    that    was    content    to    an    educated 
proletariat  that  was  ambitious. 

If   education   is  an    enemy   of   supersti- 
tion, it  is  also  the  leaven  of  equality. 


It  is  an  unpleasant  awakening  that 
comes  to  some  of  us  in  these  simple  facts. 
Public  opinion  is  too  strong  to  venture  to 
oppose  a  policy  of  popular  education,  but 
not  to  silence  complaints  against  attempts 
actually  to  educate.  "Let  the  masses 


THE  COMMON  LOT  57 

learn  to  read  and  write,  but  not  to  think/* 
is  the  educational  creed  of  a  growing  class 
in  our  communities.  "They  should  not  be 
educated  above  their  station."  Nothing  so 
terrorizes  the  successful  man  as  the  unrest 
among  the  children  of  the  unsuccessful 
man.  Yet  if  discontent  in  his  case  spurred 
him  to  endeavor,  it  is  hard  to  see  why  it 
should  not  be  praised  as  it  spurs  on  an 
entire  class.  If  a  desire  for  larger  oppor- 
tunity, for  the  abolition  of  such  restraint 
as  prevents  the  expression  of  a  larger  life, 
and  for  a  larger  equalization  of  oppor- 
tunity be  dangerous,  then  every  public 
school  in  the  land  should  be  suppressed. 
The  school-teacher  is  then  the  most  dan- 
gerous  member  of  the  community. 

As  long  as  we  educate  people  we  must 
be  ready  to  see  them  dissatisfied  with  what 
1  they   have.      That,   with   the   fear   of   the 
Lord,  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom. 

It  is  also  the  beginning  of  a  good  many 
other  things. 

,*        ,*         ?* 

You   can  educate   the   individual   away 
from  the  masses,  or  you  can  educate  the 


58       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

masses  themselves.  The  former  is  the 
easier  and,  to  most  men's  minds,  the  safer 
program.  But  it  is  not  the  best.  A  school- 
house  should  be  the  place  where  social 
equality  and  fraternity,  and  not  mere 
fighting  power,  are  bred.  It  must  create  a 
democracy  and  not  an  oligarchy.  Do  we 
really  want  a  democracy?  If  not,  let  us 
close  the  schools! 


A  LAY  SERMON  TO  FATHERS 

r  I  THERE  are  a  great  many  important 
J-  matters  possessing  the  public  mind  as 
autumn  comes,  but,  thanks  to  the  opening 
of  the  new  school  year,  a  good  many  of  us 
find  ourselves  face  to  face  with  something 
far  more  puzzlesome. 

For  we  must  think  of  the  Boy. 


Very  likely  you  sent  him  away  for  his 
vacation.  Then  you  began  to  plan  for 
yours.  You  went  about  your  work  with  a 
smile  that  was  the  first  installment  of  va- 
cation. You  were  going  to  be  with  the 
Boy. 

And  the  Boy,  away  off  on  the  farm,  was 
planning  for  your  coming.  He,  too,  began 
to  count  the  days.  The  improvements 
that  were  to  surprise  you,  the  plans  for 
every  sort  of  practicable  and  impracticable 
celebration  were  elaborately  completed. 
For  the  Boy,  like  you,  found  the  waiting 
endless.  When  you  stepped  off  the  train 

59 


60       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

the  Boy  was  there,  browned  and  big.  He 
shook  your  hand  with  obvious  self-con- 
sciousness. Men  don't  kiss  each  other! 

"How  are  you,  Boy?"  you  said.  "I'm 
all  right,"  the  Boy  replied. 

That  was  all.  But  when  you  rode  away 
with  him  by  your  side,  you  could  see,  out 
of  the  corner  of  your  eye,  that  he  was 
looking  at  you  out  of  the  corner  of  his. 
And  you  were  both  wondrous  content. 

,*         #         # 

Vacation  brought  the  fellowship  the  year 
denied.  It  has  taught  fathers  and  sons  a 
good  many  lessons,  but  none  more  startling 
than  the  fact  that  boys  grow  up. 

And  what  is  stranger,  your  boy  is  grow- 
ing up.  Some  day  he  will  be  a  man;  some 
day  he  will  be  where  you  are,  and  life  will 
have  pushed  off  on  him  the  responsibilities 
you  bear  to-day. 

Before  you  tramped  with  him  and  fished 
with  him  during  vacation  this  seemed  in- 
credible, or  at  least  a  long  way  off.  Now, 
somehow,  it  seems  at  the  door.  The  cycle 
of  nature  is  being  completed. 

The  Boy  is  getting  ready  to  crowd  you 


THE  COMMON  LOT  61 

out  of  the  day's  work,  as  you  have  crowded 
out  your  father. 


And  yet  —  God  forgive  us!  —  too  many  of 
us  fathers  are  trusting  schools  and  clubs 
and  haphazard  circumstance  to  fit  our  boys 
for  this  inevitable  usurpation.  We  are  too 
busy  to  give  them  the  companionship  we 
owe  them;  too  tired  and  irritable  to  read 
the  promise  of  strength  in  their  restless- 
ness; too  indifferent  to  their  unspoken 
hopes  to  share  in  and  shape  their  ambi- 
tions. Life  and  work  close  in  upon  us  and 
we  forget  that  they,  and  not  we  ourselves, 
are  to  be  our  successors.  We  forget  that 
we,  too,  are  sons! 


The  ordinary  father  could  know  his  Boy 
better  if  he  chose.  Not,  indeed,  just  as  he 
comes  to  know  him  in  vacation;  not,  pos- 
sibly, as  his  mother  knows  him;  but  none 
the  less  he  can  know  his  Boy. 

If  he  takes  time.  And,  as  this  is  a  lay 
sermon,  after  the  manner  of  preachers,  it 
should  be  added,  he  ought  to  take  time. 


62       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

If  a  father  is  good  for  anything,  he  himself 
is  the  best  gift  to  make  his  Boy. 

We  have  not  yet  reached  that  blear-eyed 
j  Utopia  in  which  parents  breed  children  and 
society  brings  them  up.  Despite  the  polyg- 
iamy  and  polyandry  of  the  divorce  courts 
we  are  still  a  nation  of  parents  and  chil- 
dren. 

And  just  because  we  are  thus  settled  in 
families,  fathers  and  mothers  ought  to  be 
friends  of  their  children.  The  more  com- 
plicated our  social  life  becomes,  the  more 
imperative  does  this  duty  and — as  all 
sermons  say — this  privilege  become.  It  is 
not  merely  that  such  friendships  make 
parents  better  parents  and  children  better 
men  and  women;  they  will  make  more 
gentle  that  approaching  usurpation  which 
for  a  moment  startled  us  when  we  saw  our 
boys  could  run  almost  as  fast  as  we,  and 
could  plan  almost  as  wisely.  For  we  shall 
surrender  to  friends. 

,*         <#         ,# 

Schools  and  school-teachers  are  no  sub- 
I  stitutes  for  fathers  and  mothers. 

The  winter  has  its  opportunities  just  as 


THE  COMMON  LOT  63 

truly  as  has  the  summer.  And  the  home 
can  have  its  friendships  for  Father  and 
Boy  just  as  truly  as  have  the  trail  and  the 
camp  and  the  farm. 

Happy  is  the  Boy  who  knows  this.    And 
happier  still  is  the  father. 


THANKSGIVING— IS  IT  HYPOCRISY? 

A  MERICA  has  five  holidays  which  are 
•**•  not  political:  Christmas,  New  Year's, 
Decoration  Day,  Labor  Day,  and  Thanks- 
giving. Years  ago,  in  New  England,  there 
used  to  be  a  sixth,  Fast  Day,  but  within 
the  memory  of  most  of  us  this  relic  of  a 
more  ascetic  past  had  become  simply  a 
day  when  boys  rode  horseback.  Of  them 
all  Thanksgiving  is  the  only  Puritan  holi- 
day that  has  become  universal.  It  does 
not  carry  the  burdens  that  oppress  Christ- 
mas, and  it  is  the  most  genuinely  human  of 
its  fellows.  It  celebrates  the  good  cheer  of 
our  common  lot. 

*         fi         /* 

But  where  does  Thanksgiving  come  in? 
Our  governors  and  our  President  issue 
proclamations  of  various  degrees  of  sin- 
cerity, calling  upon  us  to  praise  God  from 
whom  all  blessings  flow.  We  are  told  to  be 
thankful  because  the  price  of  wheat  in 
America  is  high  or  because  the  corn  crop 
has  been  huge.  These  proclamations  are 

64 


THE  COMMON  LOT  65 

sometimes  ambiguous.  They  are  silent 
concerning  the  famine  or  the  pestilence  in 
other  lands  that  bring  the  American  farmer 
good  fortune;  and  they  serve  chiefly  to  re- 
mind us  of  the  exact  date  on  which  the  last 
Thursday  in  November  falls.  It  is  true  a 
few  of  us  go  to  church  in  the  morning  and 
listen  to  discussions  of  the  dangers  from 
which  the  country  has  been  or  is  to  be 
saved,  but  it  takes  a  good  many  churches  to 
get  even  a  respectable  "union"  congrega- 
tion. To  most  of  us  Thanksgiving  means 
family  reunions,  big  dinners,  and  football. 

There  are  those  who  would  have  it 
something  else — a  religious  day,  a  com- 
panion of  the  Puritan  Sabbath.  To  men  of 
this  opinion  there  is  something  very  irri- 
tating in  the  splendid  roar  that  rises  from 
the  tens  of  thousands  around  the  football 
field.  But  such  persons  would  have  been 
sadly  out  of  place  on  the  first  Thanksgiving 
when,  after  going  to  church  and  after  eating 
the  best  dinners  they  could  assemble,  the 
Pilgrims  went  out  to  watch  their  young 
men  win  in  a  shooting  contest  with  the 
friendly  Indians.  Our  modern  Thanks- 
giving springs  from  this  more  material  side 


66       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

of  the  ancient  festival.  As  a  holiday  it 
has  ceased  to  be  formally  religious.  It 
frankly  celebrates  the  home  and  the  en- 
joyment of  life.  It  is  the  nearest  approach 
}  we  make  to  the  festival  of  the  Greeks. 

,*         &         # 

Are  we,  then,  hypocrites?  Is  Thanks- 
giving Day  a  farce?  It  depends  on  how 
we  think  gratitude  ought  to  be  expressed. 
Athletic  sports  are  certainly  out  of  keeping 
with  Decoration  Day,  with  its  sad  and 
sacred  memories.  But  just  as  certainly 
they  are  not  out  of  accord  with  Thanks- 
\  giving  Day.  Although  it  smacks  a  little  of 
immodesty  to  assume  to  know  what  the 
Almighty  likes  and  dislikes,  it  certainly 
seems  as  if  he  must  find  something  very 
acceptable  in  the  elemental  happiness  of 
his  creatures.  A  man  does  not  need  to  be 
miserable  in  order  to  be  grateful.  He  is 
not  necessarily  ungrateful  because  he  is 
happy.  Even  the  Puritans  killed  the  fatted 
turkey  and  invented  cranberry  sauce. 


A  nation  is  not  pious  because  it  likes 


THE  COMMON  LOT  67 

holidays,  but  neither  is  it  impious  because 
the  majority  of  its  citizens  prefer  football 
to  midweek  sermons.  We  have  no  national 
church  to  tell  us  when  we  ought  to  be  spirit- 
ual, but  we  have  a  seriousness  of  purpose 
that  our  most  strenuous  fun  cannot  de- 
stroy. Cynicism  of  any  sort  is  out  of  place 
nowadays  certainly. 

The  American  nation  can  return  thanks 
for  having  found  its  conscience.  The 
recollection  of  this  fact  should  season 
every  Thanksgiving  dinner  and  solace 
every  defeated  football  eleven.  Individ- 
uals may  be  irreligious  and  immoral,  but 
the  nation  itself  is  true  to  that  early  piety 
which  inscribed  on  our  coins,  "In  God  We 
Trust." 


OUR  COMMERCIALIZED  CHRISTMAS 

T^ROM  Thanksgiving  until  Christmas 
*-  most  of  us  live  in  an  atmosphere  of 
deepening  gloom.  We  begin  that  pre- 
season shopping  by  which  we  hope  to  save 
money,  time,  nerve,  and  the  health  of  the 
shop  girls,  but  even  the  bargain  sales  afford 
but  a  dreary  time.  We  are  in  terror  of 
forgetting  to  give  a  present  to  somebody 
who  will  give  us  one. 

The  only  star  of  hope  in  our  horizon  is 
the  certainty  that  some  of  these  people 
whom  we  shall  forget  will  send  us  presents 
so  far  in  advance  of  Christmas  that  we  can 
square  our  account  without  their  suspect- 
ing our  neglect. 


Once  Christmas  was  quite  another  affair. 
Christmas  Eve  we  hung  our  stockings  on 
the  mantelpiece  in  full  confidence  that 
Santa  Claus  could  find  his  way  through  a 
six-inch  stove  pipe.  We  tried  hard  to 
keep  awake  long  enough  to  see  him  come, 

68 


69 

but  we  never  caught  him.  Christmas 
morning  found  the  stockings  bulbous  with 
gifts  and  with  a  barley  sugar  candy  cat  in 
the  toe,  which,  as  a  concession  to  the  day, 
we  were  allowed  to  eat  before  breakfast.  But 
the  Saint  had  escaped  unseen. 

And  then  there  was  the  Christmas  tree, 
with  a  grandfather  to  distribute  the  gifts 
and  a  strong  force  of  uncles  and  aunts  to 
maintain  peace  among  the  cousins.  And 
there  was  skating  in  the  afternoon  with 
the  choicest  sort  of  melee  to  give  the  fin- 
ishing touch  to  a  day  to  be  remembered 
until  it  was  forgotten  in  the  more  spe- 
cialized joys  of  a  birthday. 

?*        t*        f* 

How  far  away  those  days  seem!  It  is 
not  merely  that  we  were  boys  and  girls 
then  and  are  men  and  women  now,  al- 
though that  probably  makes  some  differ- 
ence. It  is  not  even  that  to  our  unending 
surprise  we  find  ourselves  in  the  place  of 
our  fathers  and  mothers. 

The  spirit  of  Christmas  itself  has 
changed. 

When  we  talk  about  Santa  Claus  to  our 


70       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

children  they  look  at  us  reprovingly  as 
those  whose  eyes  have  been  opened.  What 
reality  is  there  in  that  classic  of  blessed 
memories,  "  'Twas  the  Night  before  Christ- 
mas," for  youngsters  who  think  fireplaces 
are  always  heated  with  gas  logs  and  who 
live  in  steam-heated  flats? 

We  still  have  our  Christmas  trees,  sub- 
ject to  the  regulations  of  the  fire  depart- 
ment, but  we  are  really  slaves  of  our 
Christmas  shopping  list. 

Christmas,  like  ourselves,  has  been  com- 
mercialized. 

*         f*         /* 

It  is  in  fact  the  Decoration  Day  of  a 
commercial  age.  Then,  as  on  no  other 
day,  we  face  with  compassion  those  who 
have  fallen  in  our  battles  for  wealth. 

For  a  moment  we  think  of  the  thousands 
of  children  who  have  no  share  in  that  easy 
life  we  give  our  children,  and  must  find  the 
season's  joy  in  the  charity  dinner.  Along 
with  the  barter  to  which  we  have  debased 
our  giving  within  our  circle  of  acquaint- 
ances, we  play  at  extending  the  spirit  of 
the  day  to  those  who  are  the  pawns  of  our 


THE  COMMON  LOT  71 

industrial  game.  The  Salvation  Army  lass, 
standing  cold  and  numb  on  the  street 
corner,  collecting  funds  for  Christmas  bas- 
kets for  the  poor,  reminds  us  of  the  wreck- 
age left  in  the  wake  of  our  prosperity. 

We  give  a  trifle  to  help  the  poor  temper 
the  bitterness  of  the  year  with  a  couple  of 
hours'  good  eating. 


However  sincere  we  may  be  in  our  efforts 
to  spread  Christmas  cheer,  our  charity  is 
none  the  less  a  testimony  to  our  sense  of 
the  fact  that  peace  and  good  will  have  not 
come  upon  the  earth.  Poverty  and  wretch- 
edness are  not  to  be  offset  by  yearly  gifts 
of  baskets  of  food  and  out-grown  clothes. 

We  ought  to  make  the  spasmodic  kindli- 
ness of  Christmas  one  of  the  constant  forces 
of  our  industrial  world. 

Equality  and  fraternity  are  born  not  of 
charity,  but  of  justice. 

Instead  of  commercializing  Christmas,  we 
ought  to  Christmasize  commercialism. 

,*        ,*        /* 
We  do  not  pretend  to  be  prophets,  but 


72       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 


we  can  all  dare  to  hope.  And  this  is  what 
we  hope: 

That  some  day  the  strong  will  help  and 
not  exploit  the  weak;  that  some  day  fra- 
ternity will  be  more  than  a  rhetorical 
flourish;  that  some  day  love  will  beget 
justice  rather  than  charity. 

And  Christmas  is  the  one  day  in  the 
year  that  such  venturesome  hope  seems 
more  than  a  will-o'-the-wisp. 


II 

THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIETY 


73 


ARE  WE  TOLERANT  OR  INDIFFER- 
ENT? 

TF  it  were  necessary  for  the  well-being  of 
•*•  posterity  to  give  titles  to  years  as  we 
give  them  to  men,  we  should  call  our  own 
day  "The  Tolerant."  One  can  hardly 
find  a  religious  paper — European,  Amer- 
ican, Australasian — in  which  there  is  not 
the  discussion  of  church  union.  The  sum- 
mer season  abounds  with  great  conventions, 
some  of  them  thoroughly  interdenomina- 
tional. We  have  the  Federal  Council  of 
the  Churches  of  Christ  in  America  and  the 
proposed  Conference  on  Faith  and  Order. 
There  is  even  certain  relaxation  of  attacks 
upon  higher  criticism,  and  the  critic  and 
his  critic  sit  beside  each  other  in  summer 
Bible  schools.  Yes,  we  are  growing  very 
tolerant  and  correspondingly  thankful. 

,*        ,*        * 

Yet  we  sometimes  wonder  whether  some- 
thing of  what  we  call  tolerance  should  not 
more  properly  be  regarded  as  indifference. 

75 


76       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

Do  we  really  care  whether  our  neighbor's 
belief  is  true  or  not? 

We  are  very  apt  to  look  out  on  other 
people's  hopes  and  convictions  as  a  traveler 
looks  out  upon  the  strange  people  and  faces 
with  which  he  is  surrounded  on  his  jour- 
neys. Foreigners  do  not  live  as  he  lives,  do 
not  dress  as  he  dresses,  do  not  worship  as  he 
worships;  but  he  never  undertakes  to  convert 
them.  He  is  an  observer,  not  a  missionary.  ' 

In  much  the  same  way  a  man  looks  out 
upon  the  beliefs  of  his  neighbors  with  equal 
complacency.  They  do  not  believe  as  he 
believes,  they  do  not  think  as  he  thinks, 
they  do  not  choose  the  things  he  chooses. 
He  may  not  even  understand  the  peculiar 
vocabulary  in  which  his  friends  seem  to 
find  great  spiritual  inspiration,  but  he 
never  thinks  of  getting  into  a  discussion 
with  them.  He  simply  does  not  care  what 
his  friends  believe.  Let  one  of  them  at- 
tempt to  convert  him,  and  he  hardly  knows 
whether  to  consider  the  matter  an  insult 
or  material  for  an  after-dinner  speech. 

ft        *        f* 
It  is  a  great  mistake  to  call  this  attitude 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIETY        ?? 

of  mind  tolerance.  A  man  must  have 
some  definite  convictions  to  have  that 
virtue.  Those  gentlemanly  writers  who 
regard  religion  as  a  survival  of  the  weak- 
ness of  some  prehistoric  ancestor,  and 
prefer  devotion  to  a  social  organism  which 
they  have  invented  to  a  God  whom  they 
have  exposed,  can  hardly  be  expected  to 
appreciate  positive  religious  convictions. 

They  know  what  they  do  not  believe,  but 
they  are  not  quite  so  clear  as  to  what  they 
or  anybody  else  should  believe  about  God 
and  immortality.  It  would  require  a  great 
stretch  of  imagination  to  think  of  them  as 
really  tolerant.  They  may 

Leave  to  their  sister  when  she  prays, 
Her  early  heaven,  her  happier  views, 

but  it  is  a  matter  of  condescension  on  their 
part. 

<*        ,*         ,* 

So  too  those  teachers  who  cheerfully  re- 
move the  bases  of  definite  Christian  teach- 
ing in  the  name  of  a  scientific  method  are 
no  more  necessarily  tolerant  than  the  sur- 
geon who  smiles  at  the  success  of  an 


78       THE  MAKING  OP  TO-MORROW 

operation  that  removes  a  patient's  leg. 
They  are  willing  men  should  believe  some- 
thing. They  grow  impatient  if  men  believe 
too  vigorously. 

fi        ?*        /* 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  indifferent  people  are 
very  apt  to  be  very  intolerant  when  some- 
thing they  really  do  believe  is  threatened. 
Persons  who  hold  that  a  man  is  better  in 
proportion  to  the  number  of  his  beliefs  are 
no  more  rasping  in  their  criticism  of  one 
who  suggests  a  reduction  in  this  number 
than  is  the  man  who  rejoices  in  the  belief 
that  he  does  not  believe. 


Those  stern  men  who  believed  that  theo- 
logical error  was  to  be  removed  from  the 
world  by  burning  up  its  representatives  at 
least  had  one  virtue:  they  had  positive 
conviction. 

The  problem  which  beset  them  besets  us 
in  its  reverse  form.  They  had  conviction, 
but  not  tolerance;  we  are  in  danger  of  being 
tolerant  because  we  have  no  conviction. 

For  practical  purposes  it  is  hard  to  say 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIETY        79 

which  attitude  of  mind  is  more  to  be 
avoided. 

The  moral  dilettante  who  cares  more 
about  the  opera  than  he  does  about  reli- 
gious belief  is  no  less  a  danger  to  his  time 
than  a  man  who  cares  more  about  ortho- 
doxy than  about  justice  and  mercy  and 
faith.  The  world  needs  men  with  convic- 
tions quite  as  much  as  it  needs  men  who 
do  not  interfere  with  other  people's  rights.  * 

Tolerance  is  the  child  of  conviction  and 
of  love.  It  never  had  any  other  parentage. 
To  believe  strongly,  and  yet  doubt  one's 
own  omniscience,  is  in  itself  no  small 
'  achievement;  but  to  believe  strongly  and 
permit  a  man  who  does  not  agree  with  you 
also  to  believe  strongly  is  an  evidence  of 
Christian  love. 


The  time  for  indifference  to  other  peo- 
ple's beliefs  has  not  arrived.  You  cannot 
build  up  a  society  by  first  exiling  its  God. 
What  we  want  is  men  who  sharply  dis- 
tinguish between  the  essential  and  the 
formal,  the  fundamental  and  the  acciden- 
tal, in  religious  truth,  and  who  stand  im- 


80       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

movable  upon  those  fundamentals,  and  for 
this  reason  grant  latitude  in  the  expression 
of  other  men's  faith,  and  in  those  things 
which  are  the  more  or  less  logical  deduc- 
tions from  that  faith. 

Men  who  are  to  be  brothers  do  not  need 
i.to  be  twins,  but  they  do  need  to  be  sure 
of  their  parentage  before  they  claim  fra- 
ternal rights. 


ARE  WE  ASHAMED  OF  IMMORTAL- 
ITY? 

THE  question  is  not  intended  to  be  ir- 
reverent, but  serious.     Has  the  time 
come  when  a  man  should  hesitate  to  speak 
of  a  distinct  belief  in  the  fact  that  there  is 

)  a  life  after  death?  Is  the  agnosticism  con- 
cerning the  details  of  the  world  to  come 
to  be  so  dominant  as  to  prevent  our  using 
that  gospel  which  promises  a  heaven? 
Shall  we  close  our  New  Testaments  and 
find  consolation  in  psychical  research? 

Anyone  who  has  followed  the  course  of 
practical  religious  thought  during  the  last 
few  years  cannot  have  failed  to  recognize 
the  gradual  lessening  of  emphasis  upon  the 

N  resurrection  both  of  Jesus  and  of  men.  Even 
hymns  that  speak  about  heaven  are  re- 
served for  funerals.  There  has  grown  up  a 
habit  of  treating  all  matters  pertaining  to 
life  after  death  by  way  of  allusion.  We 
are  told  that  the  resurrection  is  present  in 
the  higher  life,  the  moral  uplift  in  human 
hearts.  We  are  told  that  the  life  that  now 

81 


82       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

is  is  very  much  more  certain  than  the  life 

which  is  to  come,  and  that  we  can  very 

X  well  let  the  future  be  settled  by  the  present.  * 

In  other  words,  although  we  should  hesi- 
tate to  say  that  we  disbelieve  in  immor- 
tality, we  have  belittled  it  and  apologized 
for  believing  in  it  until  it  is  no  longer  a 
great  force  in  human  life.  It  is  "under 
investigation." 

*         ft        f* 

That  is  why  we  have  trouble  in  our 
preaching.  That  is  why  we  have  preferred 
to  turn  our  ministers  into  entertainers 
rather  than  to  keep  them  prophets  and 
priests.  That  is  why  men  do  not  listen  to 
ethical  preachers  unless  they  are  "inter- 
esting." A  morality  that  hesitates  to 
v  speak  of  heaven  and  hell  is  a  very  delicate, 
hectic  mother  of  saints.  You  cannot  get  a 
man  to  be  good  on  general  principles.  He 
wants  to  know  something  definite  as  to  the 
outcome  of  his  career.  For  practical  pur- 
poses, if  there  is  no  hell  we  must  invent 
one;  if  there  is  no  heaven  we  must  invent 
that  too. 

Anything  is  better  than  sweet  pictures 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIETY        83 

and  appeals  to  butterflies  coming  out  of 
caterpillars. 


You  tell  us,  you  writers  of  beautiful  sen- 
tences printed  on  thick,  cream-colored 
paper  and  bound  in  beautiful  covers,  you 
tell  us  that  we  should  sacrifice  for  the 
benefit  of  other  people.  But  why?  Why 
\  should  they  not  sacrifice  for  us? 

You  urge  us  to  lay  down  our  lives  for 
the  benefit  of  the  race  and  for  human 
solidarity,  and  tell  us  soul-thrilling  stories 
borrowed  from  Victor  Hugo.  But  why? 
Why  should  we  sacrifice  ourselves  for  pos- 
terity? If  neither  we  nor  they  have  any- 
thing more  than  a  life  here,  why  should 
we  be  so  keen  upon  preserving  a  race  of 
bipedal  animals  who  wear  clothes?  Exist- 
ence between  birth  and  death  does  not 
seem  to  most  of  us  sufficiently  attractive  to 
warrant  maintaining  it  at  all  costs. 

And  it  is  very  difficult  to  discover  the 
basis  of  morality  in  a  stock  farm. 


/*        /*        f* 
Convince  us  that  the  story  of  the  gospel 


I 


84      THE  MAKING  OP  TO-MORROW 

is  true,  and  that  death  does  not  close  the 
book  for  us  and  ours,  and  you  convince  us 
that  life  has  its  great  values  in  the  newer 
stage  for  development  into  which  men  are 
going.  Then  we  have  something  definite  to 
think  about,  some  hope  worth  acting  upon, 
some  motive  that  will  lead  to  sacrifice. 
That  sort  of  gospel  will  not  be  impotent. 
The  Christian  Church  professes  to  hold 
this  great  fact  of  the  future  life  revealed 
by  Jesus  as  its  chief  treasure;  the  Christian 
professes  to  believe  it;  a  Christian  preacher 
has  promised  to  preach  it. 

If  there  be  no  immortality,  poetize,  if  you 
please,  about  spring  and  cocoons  and  eth- 
ical uplifts;  only  don't  think  you  are 
preaching  the  gospel.  If  there  be  a  gospel, 
and  if  there  be  immortality,  why  be 
ashamed  to  talk  about  it?  N 


WAY  FOR  THE  LEADER! 

1VTEXT  to  being  a  leader  a  man  likes  to 
•^  be  led;  next  to  commanding  he  likes 
to  obey.  A  leader  will  lead  because  men 
respond  to  him;  men  will  be  led  because 
there  is  a  leader  to  lead.  Unfortunate  in- 
deed is  that  age  in  which  there  is  no  one 
who  dares  say  to  another,  "Thou  must!" 
Even  more  unfortunate  is  that  age  in 
which  men  uncertain  as  to  their  next  step 
are  crying  for  the  man  who  can  command. 
We  boast  of  individualism  in  religion  and 
even  more  proudly  of  freedom  of  thought 
in  all  branches  of  investigation.  Yet  we 
begin  to  question  whether  such  liberty  is 
wholesome  for  the  man  who  is  born  to  be 
led.  Individualism  is  very  apt  to  ferment  X 
into  anarchy. 

i*        ,*        ,* 

The  coming  test  of  religious  democracy 
will  be  that  of  its  ability  to  produce  men 
who  will  compel  pugnacious  individualists 
to  receive  them  as  leaders.  Such  men 

85 


86       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

must  be  men  of  individuality.  They  must 
be  broad-minded;  but  a  man  whose  liberal- 
ism consists  in  not  believing  things  other 
people  believe  is  as  useless  for  purposes  of 
leadership  as  a  goldfish  in  a  bowl.  Com- 
posite photographs  are  interesting,  but 
nobody  falls  in  love  with  them. 

Where  is  the  religious  authority  to  which 
men  of  a  democracy  will  bow  because  they 
must  bow?  Certainly  not  in  the  mere  ar- 
rogance of  self-appointed  dictators.  Nor, 
as  far  as  most  educated  men  are  concerned, 
in  an  ecclesiastical  monarchy,  although 
monarchy  is  preferable  to  mobocracy,  and 
—let  us  thank  God — a  church  that  dares 
believe  in  itself  will  always  have  men  who 
take  it  at  its  word.  A  democracy  which 
has  touched  state  and  industry  demands  a 
democratic  church. 

For  men  who  theoretically  believe  in  in^ 
dividual  liberty  there  is  no  leader  except 
the  man  of  aggressive  faith;  the  man  who 
counts  his  assets  and  does  not  worry  about 
his  liabilities;  who  dares  speak  the  things 
he  believes  and  keep  silent  about  his 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIETY         87 

doubts.     Give  men  such  a  leader  and  they 

will  follow  him  to  death. 

r 

<#         ^        ,* 

Bewildered  men  who,  chosen  as  leaders, 
seek  to  be  led,  seek  for  a  message,  seek  for 
defense  against  their  own  doubts,  are  deny- 
ing that  such  confidence  is  longer  possible. 
Distrusting  their  ready-made  beliefs,  ap- 
propriated memoriter  in  school  days  at  so 
many  pages  a  recitation,  they  stand  aghast, 
ready  to  dodge  any  assailant,  turning  from 
religion  to  sociology,  looking  for  an  open- 
ing to  teach  Latin  or  English  literature. 

They  cannot  lead  because  they  have  lost 
confidence  in  authority,  in  what  they  once 
believed  to  be  truth,  in  themselves. 


The  new  leader  is  the  child  of  a  new 
confidence.  Let  him  then  lead.  Why 
should  he  stop  to  debate  with  men  who 
prefer  to  fight  for  error?  Let  him  under- 
take the  work  of  bringing  his  new  assurance 
into  the  life  of  men  and  women  who  need 
the  assurance,  but  do  not  need  to  know 
what  the  arguments  upon  which  it  rests. 


88       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

Let  him  investigate  vicariously.  Let  him 
preach  and  teach  positively.  The  pulpit 
is  not  a  lecture  room.  The  man  of 
his  age  has  a  gospel  for  his  age.  Let  him 
speak  it  boldly  and  without  concessions  or 
conditions. 


There  is  rising  up  a  group  of  young  men 
who  have  this  compelling  conviction  in  the 
truth  of  the  gospel.  Many  of  them  are 
just  now  going  out  to  be  pastors.  They 
have  been  trained  to  search  for  truth  and 
to  recognize  it  when  found.  They  have 
been  trained  to  preach  that  truth  and  not 
to  tell  people  their  adventures  in  the 
search.  Men  are  listening  to  them  and 
begin  to  respond  to  the  great  facts  that 
have  been  the  impulsive  forces  of  the 
ages. 

These  young  men  have  no  new  truth, 
but  they  have  a  new  conviction.  They  do 
not  minimize  difficulties,  but  having  over- 
come difficulties  they  know  how  to  guide 
men  in  easier  paths.  They  have  no  patent 
panacea  for  social  ills,  but  they  have 
sensed  the  eternal  power  of  the  gospel  of 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIETY         89 

Jesus  Christ  and  believe  that  it  can  remake 
men  who  can  remake  society. 

Their  authority  is  not  that  of  the  man 
possessed  of  force  or  of  a  memorized  sys- 
tem of  theological  philosophy,  but  that  of 
the  man  who  believes  in  himself^  who 
believes  in  the  gospel,  who  believes  in 
Jesus,  and  who  believes  most  of  all  in  the 
indubitable  testimony  borne  by  nature  and 
experience  to  a  loving  God. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  AND  THE  CHANG- 
ING ORDER 

T)  ELIGION  cannot  isolate  itself  in  this 
•*•  ^  period  of  change  and  reconstruction. 
It  should  not  if  it  could.  If  any  man  is 
needed  when  the  future  is  in  the  making 
it  is  the  man  with  the  spirit  of  Jesus.  The 

radical  is  not  a  leader;  he  is  an  irritant. 

« ^m^^t^tf^^^^f 

Indispensable  as  he  is,  almost  without  ex- 
ception he  is  a  champion  of  rights  and  not 
of  sacrifice.  To  insure  stability  to  his  re- 
forms there  must  also  be  the  man  who 
dares  to  sacrifice  as  well  as  to  demand 
rights;  who  will  share  his  privileges  with 
those  who  have  none;  who  will  make  the 
life  and  comfort  of  the  artisan  superior  to 
cheapness  of  production;  who  will  not  give 
his  own  soul  as  the  price  of  taking  over  a 
worsted  competitor;  who  will  not  believe 
that  dishonesty  becomes  honest  in  propor- 
tion to  the  magnitude  of  the  enterprise  in 
which  he  is  engaged;  who  will  prefer  failure 
ito  success  when  success  costs  too  much  in 
human  suffering. 

90 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIETY         91 

If  a  Christian  is  not  this  sort  of  man, 
what,  then,  is  a  Christian?  Though  a  man 
speak  with  the  tongues  of  men  and  angels 
and  give  all  his  money  to  feed  the  poor, 
and  yet  have  not  the  spirit  of  Him  who 
suffered  and  died  because  he  loved  men  too 
much  to  be  successful,  he  is  none  of  his. 

fi         f*         # 

The  loudest  cry  to-day  is  that  for  justice. 
Justice  will  come — through  the  concession 
of  privilege.  There  can  be  no  question 
about  that.  The  only  question  is  as  to  the 
reason  for  granting  concessions.  If  they 
are  won  by  force,  it  will  be  at  the  cost  of 
much  suffering  and  of  lasting  hatreds;  if 
by  voluntary  concession,  it  will  be  because 
the  spirit  of  Jesus  is  still  dominant  in  so- 
ciety. There  is  no  third  alternative.  The 
decision  rests  in  the  hands  of  men  who  are 
nominally  and  even  actively  connected 
with  Christian  churches.  It  is  the  duty  of 
the  churches  to  see  to  it  that  they  have 
the  mind  of  Christ.  Questions  of  ortho- 
doxy and  heresy  may  well  be  left  open. 
Men  may  want  to  know  what  to  believe, 
but  much  more  do  they  want  to  know 


92       THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

how  to  live  and  help  others  to  live.  Why 
should  not  the  church  socialize  the  mind 
of  Christ? 

ft         ,*         ft 


iblic  opinion  is  only  the  common  de~ 
nominator  of  many  people's  opinion.  When 
once  individuals  think  alike  public  opinion 
is  made.  Suppose,  then,  men  should  come 
to  believe  with  Jesus,  that  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  be  beaten  into  conceding  just 
claims,  but  that  love  should  anticipate  the 
demand  of  rights.  Suppose  men  should  be 
persistently  taught  to  pattern  after  the 
good  Samaritan  rather  than  after  the  rob- 
bers on  the  road  to  Jericho.  Would  not 
public  opinion  soon  force  a  settlement  of 
disputes  and  insure  peace  where  now  there 
is  only  fear  of  war?  Good  will  would  dis- 
place policemen,  and  industry  the  charity 
organizations. 


Nor  is  this  a  mere  dream.  There  never 
was  a  time  when  men  were  more  bent  upon 
readjusting  institutions  and  ideals  for  the 
benefit  of  those  who  have  not  shared 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIETY        93 

justly  in  social  advance.  There  never  was 
a  time  when  men  recognized  more  clearly 
that  those  who  have  enjoyed  more  than 
their  proportionate  share  of  privilege  must 
learn  self-sacrifice.  The  spirit  of  conces- 
sion, which  is  but  one  expression  of  Chris- 
tian love,  is  working,  even  though  it  be  but 
slowly.  The  submission  to  arbitration  in 
industrial  disputes,  the  increase  of  legisla- 
tion in  the  interest  of  the  general  public, 
the  growing  recognition  of  the  human  fac- 
tor in  economic  life,  the  multiplication  of 
voluntary  agencies  for  eradicating  rather 
than  ameliorating  poverty,  the  growth  of 
democracy  the  world  over — all  these  are 
indications  that  Christians  have  not  lived 
in  vain. 

#         /*         # 

We  do  not  need  new  religious  institu- 
tions as  much  as  we  need  a  new  Christian 
public  opinion.  Men  may  fear  the  dom- 
inance of  a  church  or  of  a  theology;  they 
can  never  fear  the  dominance  of  the  Golden 
Rule.  And  herein  lies  the  opportunity  for 
the  Christian.  The  future  is  not  to  be 
worse  but  better  than  the  present.  The 


94      THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

age  is  changing,  but  it  is  changing  because 
men  both  within  and  without  the  church 
are  determined  to  realize  the  principles 
which  Jesus  enunciated. 

To  share  in  making  the  coming  civiliza- 
tion thoroughly  Christian  by  making  men 
and  institutions  more  Christlike  in  their 
readiness  to  give  rather  than  to  receive 
benefits — this,lmd  not  the  stubborn  holding 
;  to  rights  until  rights  are  forced  from  them, 
is  the  true  mission  of  the  Christian. 


0 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  MASSES 

THE  churches  of  America  have  been 
swept  by  the  outward  currents  of 
well-to-do  people  away  from  the  old  cen- 
ters toward  the  suburbs.  Their  old  par- 
ishes have  been  taken  over  by  commerce, 
and  the  homes  of  their  former  members 
have  become  tenements  or  have  been  re- 
placed by  warehouses.  Church  organiza- 
tions skirt  the  deserted  region,  but  their 
influence  is  little  felt.  The  tenement  house 
and  the  boarding  house  are  practically  un- 
touched by  Protestant  religious  organiza- 
tions. With  here  and  there  an  exception, 

««*«»- 

I  the  abandoned  territory  is  being  peopled 
I  by  men  and  women  who  are  neither  Jews, 
Catholics,  nor  Protestants. 

,*         ,#         ,# 

None  the  less,  there  is  no  need  of  panic. 
Christianity  is  not  a  failure.  The  church 
is  not  moribund,  however  its  critics  may 
suffer  from  rhetorical  hysteria.  Looked  at 
soberly,  the  situation  amounts  to  this:  In 

95 


96      THE  MAKING  OP  TO-MORROW 

the  past  churches  have  belonged  to  those 
who  could  support  them.  The  same  is  true, 
to  a  less  extent,  of  Protestant  churches 
to-day.  People  with  incomes  can  afford  to 
build  and  maintain  churches;  people  with- 
out incomes  cannot.  Outside  of  certain 
groups  there  is  no  widespread  opposition  to 
Christianity.  It  is  a  matter  of  expense  and 
indifference.  There  is  no  institution  taking 
the  place  of  the  church  among  the  masses. 
The  masses  cannot  afford  institutions. 


It  is  superfluous  to  discuss  whether  this 
condition  of  affairs  is  creditable  to  a  Chris- 
tian society.  We  all  agree  that  it  is  not. 
Yet  at  the  same  time  there  is  no  need  of 
general  denunciation  of  the  past  mistakes 
of  the  church.  We  are  determined  to  undo 
them.  The  development  of  social  life  is  by 
no  means  constant  or  easily  foreseen,  and 
the  church  as  a  social  institution  has  to 
adjust  itself  to  conditions  as  they  develop. 
Such  adjustment  will  no  more  be  instan- 
taneous with  the  church  than  with  legisla- 
tion. We  should,  of  course,  like  to  have 
social  reorganizations  of  all  sorts  made 


promptly.  We  should  like  to  have  the 
church  within  a  year  reorganize  itself  and 
undertake  vigorously  the  new  duties  which 
great  cities  thrust  upon  it;  but  it  is  quite 
out  of  the  question.  Unlike  sociological 
programs,  social  adjustments  cannot  be 
produced  extemporaneously. 

Fifty  years  ago  the  churches  were  as 
much  in  the  dark  as  the  sociologists  con- 
cerning the  problems  of  cities.  They  did 
the  thing  that  seemed  at  the  moment  best. 
When  they  abandoned  their  old  sites  they 
had  not  the  slightest  intention  of  abandon- 
ing people  to  evil,  or  of  lessening  their  own 
responsibility.  They  simply  went  where 
their  members  were  living.  And,  after  all, 
the  soul  of  a  man  who  is  neither  poor  nor  • 
ignorant  nor  depraved  is  worth  saving. 

ft         f*         * 

Suppose  we  drop  matters  of  origin  and 
look  at  the  future.  Is  the  church  aware  of 
its  mistake,  and  is  it  endeavoring  to  repair 
it?  That  is  a  far  more  vital  question  than 
as  to  how  affairs  got  into  such  a  crisis. 

To  this  question  there  can  be  but  one 
answer:  The  church  is  endeavoring  to  cor- 


98      THE  MAKING  OP  TO-MORROW 

rect  the  blunder  of  its  past.  It  is  aware 
that  it  is  living  in  a  new  world,  and  that 
many  of  the  methods  of  the  past  are  in- 
efficient in  the  present.  Despite  the  gloomy 
forebodings  of  men  who  criticize  from  a 
distance,  the  theological  seminaries  are 
sending  out  ministers  who  believe  no  less 
in  the  gospel,  but  who  believe  more  than 
the  men  who  left  the  center  of  cities  un- 
churched believed,  that  the  church  has  a 
mission  to  teach  men  how  to  live  just  as 
truly  as  to  teach  them  how  to  die. 

There  is  a  new  conscience  in  the 
churches. 

To  say  that  the  institution  that  has  found- 
ed practically  every  hospital,  and  endowed 
practically  every  college,  that  supports  prac- 
tically every  charity  and  ameliorative  agen- 
cy, that  has  bred  practically  every  man 
and  woman  now  working  among  the  poor, 
that  has  originated  practically  every  re- 
form, and  whose  members  have  compelled 
the  passage  of  practically  every  law  look- 
ing to  the  benefit  of  the  poor — to  say  that 
such  an  institution  is  indifferent  to  the 
^needs.of  the  masses  is  to  give  way  to  an 
impatient  and  unworthy  pessimism. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIETY         99 

The  most  hopeful  social  sign  of  the  day 
is  this  ethical  renascence  among  Christians. 

Give  the  new  forces  now  at  work  in  the 
churches  another  decade,  and  our  cities  will 
be  far  better  cared  for  religiously.  The 
Christian  of  to-day  is  reconquering  the  ter- 
ritory his  father  surrendered,  and  he  is 
endowing  his  institutions  so  that  the  poor 
man  may  always  have  a  religious  home. 


BLESSED  ARE  THE  PEACEMAKERS 

TV/TANY  cities  of  the  United  States  are 
•*•-••  in  the  state  of  industrial  war.  One 
hundred  thousand  men  and  women  are 
often  on  strike,  with  probably  several 
times  as  many  in  close  sympathy  with 
them.  Over  against  them  are  their  em- 
ployers protected  by  policemen,  detectives, 
and  soldiers.  The  ordinary  citizen  is  often 
uncertain  whether  he  lives  in  civilization  or 
in  barbarism.  He  dares  not  promise  to 
build  a  house,  buy  a  meal,  or  change  his 
linen.  With  the  avalanche  of  injunctions 
about  them,  business  men  and  laborers 
alike  begin  to  wonder  whether  they  are 
citizens  or  subjects. 

f*         f*         f* 

Yet  one  thing  stands  out  clear  in  all 
this — the  growth  of  the  reliance  upon  law 
rather  than  upon  violence.  Threats  of 
violence  are  still  made  by  the  representa- 
tives of  the  labor  unions,  and  threats  of  an 

equally    lawless    sort    are    made    by    their 

100 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIETY       101 

opponents;  but  none  the  less,  riots  are  less 
frequent  than  one  might  fear,  and  both 
employers  and  workmen  are  turning  to 
arbitration.  If  the  attitude  of  newly 
formed  labor  unions  and  those  employers 
who  for  the  first  time  are  brought  face  to 
face  with  an  actual  industrial  struggle  is 
warlike,  the  older  unions  and  the  combina- 
tions of  employers  which  have  for  years 
been  in  the  habit  of  dealing  collectively 
with  their  men,  are  coming  to  a  more  cor- 
dial understanding  and  a  fairer  recognition 
of  each  other's  positions.  While  the  general 
atmosphere  just  now  is  one  of  struggle, 
there  are  undoubtedly  growing  up  various 
forces  making  toward  peace. 


The  disappointing  thing  in  the  situation 
is  that  the  Christian  Church  is_  incon- 
spicuous as  a  peacemaker.  It  would  be 
expected  that  a  body  of  men  whose  watch- 
word is  fraternity  would  be  among  the 
most  zealous  champions  of  mutual  con- 
cession. In  some  cases,  it  is  true,  the 
clergyman  is  called  in  as  arbitrator,  and 
his  decision  is  the  expression  of  the  great 


102     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

principles  for  which  he  avowedly  stands; 
yet  the  voice  of  the  pulpit  is  not  what  it 
should  be  in  such  a  critical  situation.  It 
is  crying  in  the  wilderness,  but  it  does  not 
yet  proclaim  the  acceptable  year  of  the 
Lord. 

A  religious  teacher  should  have  a  mes- 
sage if  he  is  to  speak  upon  economic  sub- 
jects. But  what  is  his  message  to  be?  It 
is  presumptuous  for  him  to  give  advice  as 
to  how  a  business  should  be  conducted 
and  worse  than  folly  for  him  to  urge  upon 
either  party  passive  submission  to  the  de- 
mands of  the  other.  Yet  as  an  honest  man 
\P  and  as  a  follower  of  his  Master,  he  cannot 
disregard  the  obligation  laid  upon  him,  and 
f  upon  all  those  whom  he  represents,  to  as- 
sist in  the  ending  of  hatreds  and  struggles. 

****** 

Has  the  gospel  anything  to  say  to  the 
capitalist  and  to  the  labor  union? 

It  certainly  has  no  economic  program, 
and  is  utterly  silent  as  to  the  production 
of  wealth. 

Has  it  any  part  to  play  in  the  world 
that  now  is,  or  must  it  content  itself  with 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIETY      103 

assuring  people  of  justice  after  death,  and 
misery  this  side  of  heaven? 

The  question  answers  itself.  Religion  has 
a  role  to  play  in  this  world  of  industry 
quite  as  much  as  in  the  world  of  good 
manners.  Only  it  is  not  economic.  It 
does  not  need  to  wait  upon  political  econ- 
omy or  sociology.  It  has  a  distinct  mis- 
sion, one  which,  if  it  fails  to  perform,  no 
other  agency  will  accomplish;  and  this 
mission  is  to  make  men  loving. 

Why  not  drop  heresy  hunting  and  take 

up    this    duty?      Why    not    teach    church 

members  that  they  do  not  escape  moral 

responsibilities  because  they  unite  in  unions 

i  or  corporations? 

We  need  to  be  taught  that  there  is  no 
excuse  for  the  good  man  who  allows  a  bad 
man  to  act  as  his  representative  in  mat- 
ters of  business,  or  for  a  philanthropic 
organization  which  supports  itself  by  funds 
wrung  by  conscienceless  agents  from  its 
tenants. 

Above  all,  do  we  need  to  be  taught  that 
preparation  for  war  is  a  heathen  way  of 
insuring  peace,  and  that  the  Christian 
method  is  to  avoid  war  by  removing  causes 


104     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

of  dispute.  A  Christian  society  may  pun- 
ish; it  should  never  fight.  This  law  is  as 
true  of  industry  as  of  politics.  A  world 
kept  at  peace  by  fear  of  strikes  and  lock- 
outs is  as  hideous  a  caricature  of  Christen- 
dom as  a  world  kept  at  peace  through  fear 
of  armies. 

«» 

f*        ft        /* 

As  far  as  the  church  itself  is  concerned, 
the  situation  is  a  very  simple  one:  the 
production  of  men  who  have  the  spirit  of 
Christ  and  are  ready  to  sacrifice  privilege 
for  the  benefit  of  other  people.  And  that 
means  strong  preaching.  A  religion  which, 
no  matter  what  its  pious  phrases,  actually 
leads  a  man  to  hold  fast  to  everything  he 
possesses,  whether  it  be  money  or  advan- 
tage, has  no  right  to  call  itself  Christian. 
It  is  mere  barbarism.  Obey  it  and  you 
will  be  following  the  medicine-man. 

Conciliatory  arbitration,  with  the  accent 
upon  the  first  word,  is  the  practical  contri- 
bution Christian  men  can  make  to  the  indus- 
trial situation.  And  Christians  must  make 
this  contribution  without  fear  of  the  con- 
tempt of  those  who  prefer  fighting  to  discus- 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIETY      105 

sion ;  without  fear  of  being  called  amateurs 
in  practical  affairs;  without  fear  of  anything 
except  the  rebuke  of  one's  own  conscience. 

If  the  Golden  Rule  is  inoperative  outside 
pious  books,  let  us  be  honest  with  our- 
selves and  say  so. 

If  reconciliation  between  men  is  less  pos- 
sible than  reconciliation  with  God,  let  us 
say  that  also. 

Only  let  us  also  not  deceive  ourselves  in 
another  particular.  Let  us  be  honest  and 
label  ourselves  heathen. 


THE  LARGER  SOCIAL  SERVICE  OF 
THE  CHURCH 

IV/fODERN  society  is  under  conviction  of 
•**-*•  sin.  True,  this  conviction  is  not 
quite  the  same  as  that  under  which  olden- 
time  evangelists  sought  to  bring  their 
hearers.  We  have  not  had  forced  upon  us 
the  horrors  of  hell  and  our  desert  of  eternal 
punishment.  But  we  are  none  the  less 
suffering  the  pangs  of  conscience. 

Who  is  responsible  for  overworked  moth- 
ers, for  starved  babies,  for  children  who 
work  that  capital  may  declare  dividends, 
for  shop  girls  burned  alive  for  lack  of  fire 
escapes,  for  politicians  who  are  grafters,  for 
corporations  that  defy  law,  for  the  horrors 
of  the  white-slave  traffic,  for  fathers  and 
mothers  who  prefer  "joy  rides"  to  the  care 
of  children? 

Once  we  were  indifferent  to  such  ques- 
tions. We  said  misery  is  the  outgrowth  of 
social  evolution  and  the  accompaniment  of 
prosperity. 

Such  replies  no  longer  leave  us  easy- 
106 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIETY      107 

minded.  Even  those  who  still  amuse  their 
consciences  with  old  excuses  masquerading 
in  scientific  vocabularies,  are  growing  mor- 
ally discontented.  Our  modern  world  may 
not  fear  hell,  but  it  does  fear  the  outcomes 
of  injustice,  mendacity,  and  lust. 

Our  sense  of  responsibility  is  growing  in- 
dividual. We  are  not  quite  so  ready  as  we 
once  were  to  slip  over  upon  society  the 
responsibility  for  social  sin.  We  get  de- 
creasing satisfaction  from  trying  to  think 
of  ourselves  as  peripatetic  laboratories 
emerging  from  the  social  process  and  domi- 
nated by  the  sex  instinct.  Somehow  we  are 
coming  to  feel  that  what  is  nobody's  fault 
is  our  own  fault. 


The  very  bitterness  of  our  disillusioning 
is  become  our  salvation.  To  face  moral 
evil  is  to  call  upon  God  for  help.  Convic- 
tion of  sin  has  always  been  the  first  stage 
of  a  revival  of  religion. 

We  are  already  in  the  midst  of  such  a 
revival.  And  it  is  something  more  than  a 
new  sense  of  duty.  It  is  a  turning  to  the 
God  of  duty. 


108     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

As  we  try  to  work  for  him  we  see  the  hope- 
lessness of  our  efforts  unless  he  works  for  us. 

As  Jesus  Christ  touches  men's  con- 
sciences, the  Father  of  Jesus  Christ  must 
give  them  forgiveness. 


This  depth  of  moral  unrest,  this  Nathan- 
like  appeal  we  each  one  of  us  make  to  our- 
selves as  we  see  the  injustice  and  the 
cruelty  of  what  we  call  civilization,  this  new 
turning  to  God,  all  force  the  church  to  take 
itself  seriously  as  an  institution  of  a  religion 
that  shall  inspire  social  love  and  sacrifice. 

That  is  the  larger  social  service  the 
church  alone  can  render. 

However  much  our  churches  can  minister 
to  the  communities'  need  of  wholesome  pic- 
ture shows,  libraries,  boys'  clubs,  basket- 
ball teams,  and  men's  banquets,  they  will 
commit  suicide  if  they  do  not  help  society 
out  from  its  conviction  of  sin  into  a  sense  of 
brotherhood  through  fellowship  with  God. 

Social  service  is  not  altruistic  restless- 
ness. It  is  the  wisely  directed  ministry  of 
souls  who  believe  in  something  better  than 
the  heroism  of  a  forlorn  hope.  It  is  religion 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIETY      100 

at  work.  We  do  not  want  our  churches 
"hustling"  miscellaneous  reforms.  We  do 
not  want  them  ethical  orphan  asylums 
where  people  are  amused  to  keep  them  out 
of  mischief.  We  want  them  spiritual 
homes  in  which  souls  are  born  into  spiritual 
life  and  taught  the  social  meaning  of 
regeneration. 

i*         f*         f* 

Social  evolution  is  a  splendid  term,  but 
it  leaves  the  heart  empty.  If  the  Holy 
Ghost  is  really  convicting  the  world  of  sin 
and  righteousness  and  judgment,  a  church 
which  tries  to  introduce  religion  surrep- 
titiously between  stereopticon  slides  is  a 
sorry  spectacle.  But  a  church  filled  with  a 
contagious  faith  in  the  God  of  things  as  they 
are  becoming,  that  seeks  first  the  kingdom 
of  God  and  his  righteousness,  that  stirs 
men  to  moral  discontent  in  order  that  they 
may  be  brought  into  sacrificial  service 
through  fellowship  with  their  crucified 
Lord,  that  bases  the  demand  for  human 
fraternity  upon  the  experience  of  divine 
sonship — such  a  church  is  the  veritable 
servant  of  the  living  God. 


AFTER  THE  STORM 

was  never  moribund,  but  there 
are  plenty  of  men  who  recall  the  days 
when  they  feared  to  diagnose  its  symptoms 
—days  when  they  confused  the  origin  of  re- 
ligion with  religion;  an  imperfect  concep- 
tion of  God  with  God  himself;  statements 
about  molecular  and  chemical  change  in 
nerve  tissues  with  philosophies  of  the  uni- 
verse; the  doubts  born  of  uncorrelated  new 
facts  with  a  final  decision  as  to  life  and 
death.  There  were  even  years  when  one 
did  nqt  dare  to  accept  truth  for  fear  lest 
it  should  be  fatal  to  religion.  Those  were 
the  days  when  panic  sought  to  hide  itself  in 
denunciation  of  theories  men  could  not  cor- 
relate with  a  circumscribed  belief  in  God. 


For  men  who  face  reality  and  who  will 
not  bow  the  knee  to  corollaries  hastily 
drawn  from  over-bold  speculation  these 
days  are  past.  Such  men  may  have  given 

up  some  of  their  former  opinions,  but  they 
no 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIETY      111 

have  not  abandoned  faith.  They  have  no 
skeletons  in  their  theological  closets  to 
make  them  timid.  Life  is  a  problem,  but 
it  is  no  longer  a  riddle.  We  know  God  bet- 
ter because  we  know  his  universe  better.  If 
we  are  less  anthropomorphic,  we  are  also 
less  deistic.  God  grows  nearer  as  we  see 
chance  banished  from  the  world,  and  he 
grows  more  personal  as  he  grows  less 
distant.  Increasing  knowledge  demands  a 
larger,  not  a  smaller  common  denominator 
of  faith,  and  for  the  man  who  understands 
Jesus  that  denominator  is  not  far  to  find. 


As  religious  men  we  are  less  interested 
in  origins  than  in  destinies.  If  a  man  by 
anxiety  cannot  add  a  cubit  to  his  stature, 
still  less  can  he  add  to  or  take  from  his 
ancestors.  In  a  world  of  change  they,  at 
least,  are  certain.  Not  Whence?  but 
Whither?  is  the  vital  question,  and  that  is 
being  answered  by  appeal,  not  only  to 
longings,  but  to  knowledge  as  well. 

/*        t*        f* 
The  storm  is  past.     Through  the  fog  of 


112     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

criticism  and  reconstructions  looms  land. 
It  is  ours  as  truly  as  it  was  our  fathers'. 
Our  charts  are  drawn  from  fuller  surveys, 
our  course  is  better  buoyed,  the  headlands 
stand  out  clearer  from  the  shore.  We 
never  doubted  we  should  arrive,  and  now 
we  see  our  port.  God  and  immortality  and 
the  strong  Son  of  God — these  are  to-day 
not  less,  but  more  secure. 


Ill 


THE  STIRRINGS  OF  A  NATION'S 
CONSCIENCE 


113 


HAVE  WE  REPUDIATED  HONOR? 

rilHE  question  is  not  mere  rhetoric.  For 
-L  years  dishonesty  has  played  its  role 
in  politics,  but  during  the  past  few  years 
the  citizens  of  the  United  States  have  been 
subjected  to  an  almost  daily  recurring 
shame.  They  have  seen  officials  high  and 
low  indicted,  and  sometimes  sentenced 
as  bribe-takers  and  blackmailers.  From 
Maine  to  California  there  has  arisen  the 
stench  of  corruption  in  city  and  in  state. 
A  Senator  of  the  United  States  has  been 
sentenced  for  using  his  official  position  in 
behalf  of  a  questionable  corporation.  Is  it 
any  wonder  that  the  plain  citizen  wonders 
whether  honesty  is  still  regarded  as  a 
virtue?  Has  the  time  come  when  men 
,  have  frankly  determined  that  they  cannot 
'  jf  \serve  God  and  have  chosen  Mammon? 

#         *         # 

We  cannot  believe  this  to  be  true.  Ex- 
posure is  not  an  evil.  It  is  a  sign  of  a  new 
moral  interest.  Our  shame  is  great,  but  we 

115 


116     THE  MAKING  OP  TO-MORROW 

are  not  shameless;  we  are  bewildered,  but 
we  are  not  cynical ;  we  are  disgraced,  but  we 
propose  to  disgrace  those  who  have  dis- 
graced us.  The  very  fact  that  throughout 
the  United  States  evils  are  uncovered  ar- 
gues that  American  politics  are  not  beyond 
hope,  and  that  the  public  conscience  is 
aroused. 

Reform  is  the  inevitable  outcome  of  abuse. 

It  is  a  pity  that  the  forces  making  for 
better  things  cannot  count  upon  all  their 
natural  allies.  It  is  a  simple  matter  to 
wipe  bribe-taking  off  the  slate;  men  need 
only  stop  bribing.  Corruption  is  not  to  be 
laid  to  the  low-lived  politician  who  worms 
his  way  into  some  petty  office.  We  can 
remove  him  from  office,  or  we  can  surround 
him  with  so  many  honest  colleagues  as  to 
render  him  harmless.  The  reform  that  is 
needed  is  not  merely  a  turning  of  rascals 
out  of  office.  Any  reform  that  begins  in 
politics  must  end  in  ordinary  business. 

Corruption  means  corruptors.    . 

,*         ,*        <* 

The  gravest  danger  to  which  our  civic 
life  is  exposed  is  the  "respectable'*  man 


A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE          117 

who  seeks  to  accomplish  his  ends  by  offer- 
ing legislators  an  opportunity  for  "boodle." 
The  more  our  civilization  develops,  the 
more  extended  is  the  region  of  contact  be- 
tween legislation  and  private  interest.  The 
recent  decisions  of  the  Supreme  Court,  as 
regards  railroads,  would  have  been  as  un- 
necessary as  undreamed  of  thirty  years 
ago.  Unless  all  signs  fail,  this  tendency 
for  a  closer  dependence  of  business  upon 
the  state  will  increase.  In  this  increase  lies 
the  most  critical  question  of  the  day. 

Its  answer  will  be  honest  corporations  or 
socialism.    There  is  no  third  alternative. 


It  is  the  fear  lest  government  shall  in 
some  way  be  subjected  to  business  interests 
that  accounts  for  the  plain  citizen's  fear  of 
trusts.  He  does  not  object  to  the  combina- 
tion of  capital  in  itself.  The  very  farmer 
who  denounces  corporations  will  buy  stock 
in  a  trust  organized  by  his  neighbors. 

Nor  is  it  that  the  plain  citizen  objects 
to  the  lobby,  at  least  not  what  he  would 
call  a  legitimate  lobby. 

His   apprehension   is   due   to   the   mere 


118     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

presence  of  representatives  of  enormous 
\wealth  at  the  seat  of  government.  Being 
himself  subject  to  like  passions  with  his 
legislators,  he  cannot  avoid  suspecting  that 
such  presence  means  influence,  and  that 
influence  means  corruption.  As  a  religious 
man  he  may  believe  in  the  miracles  of  the 
Bible,  but  as  a  plain  man  among  men  he 
cannot  believe  that  the  presence  of  repre- 
sentatives of  corporations  in  the  lobbies  of 
legislative  assemblies  means  purity,  in 
politics. 

,#        f*        fl 

It  is  no  time  for  good  citizens  to  de- 
spond. The  issue  is  one  not  of  politics 
alone,  but  of.  business  honesty.  As  long  as 
human  nature  continues,  it  will  be  the 
•y  moral  question  which  lies  below  every 
'  ^tto*-  The  good  citizen  will  not  believe 
that  honor  is  a  luxury  in  either  private  or 
public  affairs.  Therefore  he  hates  dis- 
honor. It  is  he  who  has  brought  corrup- 
tion to  light.  It  will  be  he  who  finally 
establishes  such  conditions  as  will  make 
rascals,  whether  respectable  or  unrespect- 
able,  cease  from  troubling. 


A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE 


119 


If  respectability  will  not  be  honest  from 
choice,  it  will  share  the  punishment  waiting 
for  the  rascal  with  whom  it  chooses  to 
associate. 


T  EGALITY  is  one  thing,  morality  is 
•^  another.  An  action  is  legal  until  it 
is  proved  illegal.  That  is  often  a  long 
process.  Lawmaking  has  not  been  of  late 
an  entirely  disinterested  process.  In  fact, 
some  very  keen  men  find  a  more  than  com- 
fortable living  in  making  laws  and  in 
keeping  laws  from  being  made.  But  sooner 
or  later  law  responds  to  public  conscience 
and  moves  on  in  its  unceacing  pursuit  of 
morality. 


Conscience  in  many  respectable  people 
consists  in  denouncing  the  sins  of  other 
-'people. 

This  may  sound  cynical,  but  it  is  meant 
to  be  a  bald  statement  of  fact. 

What  respectable  citizen  likes  to  call 
himself  a  rascal?  He  never  bribes.  He  is 
held  up  by  labor  organizations,  city  coun- 
cils, and  State  Legislatures. 

He  does  not  graft.     He  does  not  expect 

120 


A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE          121 

to  apply  the  Sermou  on  the  Mount  to 
business. 

He  contributes  to  no  corporation  fund. 
He  only  helps  to  save  his  country  with  his 
money. 

Other  men  may  water  stock.  He  simply 
capitalizes  his  company  on  the  basis  of  its 
earning  capacity. 

There  are  bribers  and  corruptionists  and 
stock  gamblers.  He  laments  the  fact  and 
writes  essays  on  the  morals  of  the  country 
in  which  such  evil  men  live. 

And  he  is  worse  than  the  men  he  con- 
demns. He  is  a  hypocrite. 


We  are  just  now  seeing  the  social  con- 
science awakened  to  the  dangers  from  such 
respectability.  It  is  a  movement  which 
cheers  the  optimist  and  even  halts  the 
cynic.  We  have  dared  take  account  of 
stock  of  our  national  disgraces,  and  de- 
spite the  hypocrisy,  the  corruption,  the 
prostitution  of  government,  the  barefaced 
knavery  and  downright  thieving  we  have 
discovered  in  men  we  did  not  suspect 
quite  as  truly  as  in  men  we  did 


THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

suspect,  we  are  at  least  not  paralyzed  by 
the  revelation.  We  have  been  disgraced, 
but  we  are  punishing  the  respectable  ras- 
cals. Slowly  but  relentlessly  they  are 
brought  to  book  —  not  all  of  them,  but 
enough  of  them  to  prove  that  the  average 
citizen,  whether  or  not  he  may  dress  for 
dinner,  is  at  bottom  honest  and  bound  to 
make  it  uncomfortable  for  the  man  who 
betrays  his  trust.  He  is  demanding  in- 
vestigation where  a  few  years  ago  he  could 
only  submit  and  suffer. 


The  millennium  has  not  dawned,  but  a 
new  sense  of  right  is  in  evidence.  Men 
who  have  grown  rich  by  exploiting  out- 
grown legislation  need  defenders.  Not  so 
long  ago  they  found  only  imitators.  That 
v  means  a  growing  social  conscience. 

The  average  citizen  cannot  follow  aca- 
demic discussions,  but  he  knows  something 
is  wrong,  and  he  thinks  he  knows  how  that 
something  should  be  made  right.  He  does 
not  want  charity;  he  wants  restitution. 
He  does  not  want  fine  phrases;  he  wants 
elementary  honesty. 


A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE          123 
And  he  will  have  it. 

,#        ,#        ,# 

Just  how  this  new  social  conscience  will 
yet  express  itself,  it  is  too  early  to  prophesy. 
Wait  till  it  is  a  few  years  older.  But  one 
thing  is  certain:  it  will  insist  that  laws  be 
enforced  rather  than  evaded,  that  law- 
makers be  honest  rather  than  blackmailers, 
that  men  produce  wealth  as  conscientiously 
as  they  use  it.  It  will  not  accomplish  all 
that  it  should,  but  it  will  accomplish 
something. 

Conscience  is  a  poor  servant,  but  it  is  a 
terrible  master. 


NEW-FASHIONED  HONESTY 

AFTER-DINNER  speakers  are  making 
much  of  old-fashioned  honesty.    They 
very  properly  bemoan  present  corruption, 
graft,  chicanery,  and  the  entire  list  of  evils, 
which,  with  time-honored  jokes,  make  up 
ithe  stock-in-trade  of  after-dinner  speakers. 
They  would  make  men  virtuous  by  making 
them  like  their  grandfathers. 

t*         f*         # 

But  what  inspiration  lies  in  this  eulogy 
of  grandparents?  It  is  always  easy  to  see 
a  saint  in  a  dead  relative,  just  as  it  is  easy 
to  see  a  statesman  in  a  dead  politician. 
Some  of  us  are  very  keen  to  build  monu- 
ments for  the  prophets  these  very  same 
grandparents  made  extremely  uncomfort- 
able. 

Why  talk  about  our  ancestors'  honesty? 
Why  not  have  an  honesty  of  our  own? 

Grandfathers'  virtues,  like  grandfathers' 
clocks,  may  be  a  badge  of  respectability, 
but  in  our  own  day  they  are  not  always 

124 


A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE          125 

in  good  running  order.  Our  forefathers 
were  no  better  than  we  are — indeed,  to 
judge  from  the  criticism  of  their  fellow 
citizens  of  another  political  party,  they 
were  a  good  deal  worse! 


Old-fashioned  honesty  gave  sixteen 
ounces  to  the  pound,  condemned  wooden 
nutmegs,  paid  its  debts,  told  no  lies,  and 
kept  five  or  six  of  the  commandments. 
But  the  world  in  which  old-fashioned  hon- 
esty lived  was  singularly  uncomplicated. 
Smith  knew  Jones  and  Jones  knew  Smith. 
Neither  thought  seriously  of  that  great 
mass  of  people  whose  names  they  did  not 
know.  If  Smith  did  not  cheat  Jones,  and 
Jones  did  not  cheat  Smith,  there  was 
every  chance  that  each  would  die  in  the 
odor  of  respectability,  and  have  his  pic- 
ture, painted  by  Copley  or  by  some 
crayon  artist,  hung  in  his  local  Hall  of 
Fame. 

Individualism  set  the  limits  to  old- 
fashioned  honesty.  It  had  broken  down 
political  absolutism,  thrown  the  bones  of 
kings  into  lime  pits,  and  achieved  gen- 


126     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

erally  those  results  which  go  to  make  up 
the  working  hypothesis  of  yesterday's  life. 

ft         ft         f* 

We  need  this  individualistic  honesty  to- 
day, but  we  also  need  a  very  much  bigger 
sort  of  honesty,  an  honesty  which  sees  that 
our  obligations  are  set,  not  alone  by  our 
relations  with  each  other,  but  also  by  our 
relations  with  municipalities  and  states, 
with  a  nation  and  a  world.  Such  honesty 
is  not  any  too  common.  Men  have  gone 
down  to  their  mausoleums  labeled  honest 
millionaires  who  were  directors  in  corpora- 
tions whose  methods  would  bring  blushes 
to  the  cheek  of  a  confidence  man.  Accord- 
ing to  the  standard  of  old-fashioned  hon- 
esty there  was  nothing  to  be  said  against 
these  honest  millionaires.  But  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  new  honesty  they  were 
very  like  thieves. 

They  robbed  society  legally. 

*         f*         ft 

A  man  does  not  need  to  be  an  academic 
optimist  to  see  the  beginnings  of  this  new- 
fashioned  honesty.  We  are  doing  the  best 


A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE          127 

we  can  to  shape  up  laws  which  shall  express 
a  new  social  conscience. 

Morality  is  always  about  a  generation 
ahead  of  legality.  Good  men  once  be- 
lieved slavery  both  constitutional  and 
right.  Twenty-five  years  ago,  and  even 
less,  men  took  rebates  from  railroads  as 
they  took  discounts  from  wholesalers.  It 
never  occurred  to  them  that  they  were 
doing  wrong.  But  the  new  social  con- 
science would  not  think  of  justifying  slav- 
ery, or  hold  a  man  guiltless  for  taking 
rebates  from  the  railroads. 


It  is  no  time  for  pessimism,  except  for 
those  who  can  sell  pessimism  at  so  much  a 
thousand  words.  It  is  a  day  rather  for 
congratulation  that  a  commercial  age  has 
set  itself  to  be  honest  in  a  big  way.  For 
the  social  conscience  is  in  deadly  earnest. 

;To  grow  rich  fast  is  to  risk  being  investi- 
gated. 

Every  day  it  is  getting  more  desirable  to 
be  honest.  We  are  no  longer  satisfied  with 
a  morality  whose  ideals  are  those  of  a 
small  corner  grocery.  We  are  bound  to 


128  k  THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

have   men — and   particularly   legislators — 
give  a  square  deal  to  the  public. 

That  is  the  new-fashioned  honesty,  and 
that  is  the  sort  of  honesty  no  man  or  group 
of  men  can  prevent  our  having. 


THE  APPEAL  TO  BRUTE  FORCE 

HPHERE  was  a  time  when  we  thought 
violence  had  been  quarantined.  We 
expected  there  would  be  fighting  in  Africa 
and  revolutions  in  South  American  repub- 
lics, but  we  did  not  expect  violence  to 
become  epidemic.  We  thought  that  the 
reign  of  peace  and  good  will  among  Chris- 
tian nations  was  assured  by  the  providen- 
tial discovery  of  smokeless  powder,  sub- 
marine torpedo  boats,  and  other  agents  of 
a  beneficently  systematized  slaughter.  We 
almost  regretted  the  civilizing  of  the  Red 
Man,  since  it  shut  the  door  of  rapid  promo- 
tion to  West  Point  graduates. 

But  apparently  our  dreams  were  the  re- 
sults of  ill-digested  optimism.  Despite  the 
prophecies  of  the  poet,  the  reign  of  violence 
is  not  yet  over,  and  peace  seems  impatient 
of  anything  but  a  bloody  wooing. 

For  militarists  have  taken  to  prophecy. 

Japan  and  Russia  had  to  fight  before  the 
fate  of  China  could  be  fixed.  Russia  and 
Great  Britain  must  fight  if  the  future  of 

129 


130     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

India     and    Tibet    is    to    be    determined. 
France  and  Germany  cannot  always  main- 
tain their  truce  if  the  German  colors  are  to 
float  over  Strasburg.     The  Turk  must  be 
red-handed  as  long  as  Armenians  are  his 
I  unwilling  subjects.  The  United  States  must 
I  inevitably  be  drawn  into  the  maelstrom  of 
I  international  war  if  it  is  to  insist  upon  the 
integrity  of  China  and  its  own  share  in  the 
world's  commerce.     The  Far  East  may  yet 
involve   the   civilized    world    in   a  general 
war. 

So  has  run  the  prophecy  of  militarism. 

,*         <*         # 

Nor  has  it  been  the  soldier  alone  who 
would  thus  build  up  a  better  future  by  a 
recourse  to  force. 

The  "educational  committee"  of  the 
labor  union  ushers  in  the  reign  of  fraternity 
by  terrifying  nonunion  girls  and  killing 
nonunion  men. 

Employers'  Associations,  scorning  the 
elemental  brutality  of  cavemen,  starve  re- 
calcitrant employees  into  peace  as  their 
feudal  prototypes  starved  a  town  into  con- 
senting to  be  sacked. 


A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE          131 

Ecclesiastical  bodies  cure  heresy  by  ruin- 
ing the  reputation  of  heretics. 

Mobs  lynch  Negroes. 

And  Christian  nations  in  the  interest  of 
commerce  partition  empires,  appropriate 
new  continents,  and  maintain  order  in  a 
Belgian  Free  State  by  mutilating  natives 
who  refuse  to  tap  rubber  trees.  Scratch 
civilization  and  you  will  find  something  far/ 
worse  than  a  Cossack. 


And  yet  it  is  not  because  men  have 
grown  more  savage  that  they  thus  invite 
deadly  struggle.  They  were  never  more 
prodigal  in  their  charities.  The  nation 
that  invents  new  guns  and  new  armor  or- 
ganizes a  Red  Cross  League  to  care  for  the 
victims  of  its  inventions.  It  is  not  that 
the  better  men  among  us  have  new  lust 
for  violence.  It  is,  rather,  that  the  ruling 
and  the  subject  peoples  and  classes  have 
grown  desperate.  Peace  and  love  and  self- 
sacrifice  seem  for  the  moment  terms  of  an 
impracticable  rhetoric.  In  momentary  de- 
spair of  other  methods  of  reaching  peace 
men  have  dressed  up  their  passions  in  the 


THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

guise  of  some  good  cause,  and,  as  always, 
believe  that  uniforms  justify  violence. 


It  is  not  difficult  to  understand  this 
desperation.  What  man  of  us  has  not 
chafed  under  injustice  or  ingratitude  and 
longed  to  call  down  fire  from  heaven  upon 
inhospitable  Samaritans?  Why  not  treat 
brutes  as  they  would  treat  us?  It  is  no 
easy  thing  for  a  man,  much  less  a  nation, 
to  be  strong  and  gentle,  self-reliant  and 
patient. 

Yet  to  this  peace  men  and  nations  must 
some  day  come  and,  despite  recent  history, 
11  are  coming.  Besides  the  recurrence  to 
brute  force  there  is  also  in  world  politics 
and  industrial  struggles  a  recognition  of  the 
final  value  of  the  Golden  Rule.  The  Hague 
Tribunal  and  arbitration  treaties  are  not 
ghosts  of  dead  optimisms. 

It  is  not  merely  that  men  believe  war  of 
every  sort  to  be  fearfully  costly.  Eco- 
nomic arguments  may  very  well  be  over- 
whelmed by  economic  arguments,  and  the 
gains  of  a  commercial  war  may  be  judged 
greater  than  the  penalties  of  increased 


A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE          133 

national  debts  and  bankrupt  merchants. 
National  and  industrial  peace  must  be 
built  on  something  more  fundamental  than 
profit  and  loss  accounts. 

It  must  be,  nay,  it  is  being  built  upon  a 
recognition  of  elemental  justice. 

Madness  may  have  seized  the  world  for 
the  moment,  but  brute  force  cannot  always 
be  the  court  of  final  appeal.  To  believe 
otherwise  is  to  misread  the  past  and  mis- 
judge the  signs  of  the  times. 


GENTLEMEN  POISONERS 

TN  the  good  old  days  the  dinner  table  was 
a  favorite  place  for  ridding  oneself  of 
dangerous  rivals.  You  gave  a  great  dinner, 
surreptitiously  inserted  poison  into  some- 
thing your  guest  would  eat  or  drink— 
and  were  relieved  of  further  anxiety  con- 
cerning him  and  his  doings.  Everything 
was  done  decently  and  in  order.  Common 
folk  might,  indeed,  attend  to  such  matters 
in  a  vulgar  fashion.  Gentlemen  poisoned 
in  a  gentlemanly  way. 

And  as  they  made  law  and  administered 
law  and  punished  breakings  of  law,  there 
was,  of  course,  no  scandal. 


With  their  wider  ethical  outlook  our 
manufacturers  find  it  difficult  to  approve 
altogether  of  this  method  of  procedure. 
For  one  thing,  it  was  too  exclusive.  Gen- 
tlemen poisoned  nobody  but  gentlemen. 
I  Now  they  poison  anybody. 

Such  limitation  was,  however,  probably 

134 


A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE          135 

to  be  expected  of  a  less  developed  past. 
Italians  and  Frenchmen  of  the  fourteenth 
century  could  hardly  be  expected  to  reach 
really  broad  democratic  interests.  Amer- 
ica had  not  been  discovered,  corporations 
had  not  been  invented,  trade  was  of  neces- 
sity limited. 

Then,  too,  it  must  be  admitted  that  some 
of  the  agents  which  the  gentlemen  poisoners 
of  those  days  employed  were  not  as  re- 
spectable as  could  have  been  desired.  The 
business  had  not  become  "respectable." 

And  the  list  of  poisons  was  also  rather 
restricted.  The  resources  of  modern  science 
were  unknown,  and  one's  selection  was 
necessarily  limited  to  a  few  drugs,  and  even 
these  were  often  detected. 


With  the  march  of  modern  improve- 
ments these  limitations  have  been  largely 
removed.  The  gentleman  poisoner  of  to- 
day has  every  possible  opportunity.  He 
can  color  candies  with  coal  tar  dyes;  he 
can  preserve  meat  with  boracic  acid;  he 
can  keep  milk  sweet  with  formaline.  If 
he  is  in  the  dairy  business  he  can  put 


136     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

"preservatives"  into  his  butter,  although 
the  fact  that  a  child  would  have  to  eat  a 
pound  of  his  product  to  be  killed  some- 
what lessens  its  efficiency.  If  he  sells 
molasses,  he  can  lighten  its  color  with  sul- 
phur compounds,  though  here  again  it  takes 
a  good  deal  of  molasses  absolutely  to  kill 
anybody.  If  he  makes  marshmallows  or 
marshmallow  crackers,  he  can  use  paraffin. 
True,  paraffin  is  not  a  deadly  poison,  but 
any  large  amount  of  it  is  pretty  sure  to 
produce  some  fatal  intestinal  trouble.  If 
his  interests  are  more  philanthropic,  he 
can  sell  a  cure-all  composed  of  sulphuric 
acid  diluted  with  water  at  one  dollar  a 
bottle.  By  advertising  cough  medicine  he 
can  help  people  become  victims  of  mor- 
phine and  opium.  And  then  there  is  always 
acetanilid  for  headaches. 

Verily,  the  gentleman  poisoner  of  to-day 
is  far  more  fortunate  than  his  brothers  of 
the  Borgia  family. 


For  years  we  endeavored  to  obtain  federal 
legislation  to  prevent  "respectable"  citizens 
from  killing  us  off.  Year  after  year  bills 


A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE          137 

were  introduced  into  Congress  providing 
that  articles  of  food  and  drink  and  medi- 
cines should  be  so  labeled  as  to  protect  the 
innocent  purchaser.  All  through  these 
years  there  went  up  to  heaven  the  cry  of 
little  children  who  have  been  sacrificed  on 
the  altar  of  patent  medicines  manufactured 
and  sold  by  "gentlemen."  Men  standing 
high  in  the  community  have  sent  to  every 
dinner  table  in  the  land  goods  which  they 
knew  contained  deadly  poison,  calculating 
that  no  person  would  eat  enough  at  any 
one  time  to  be  killed  outright.  These 
"gentlemen" — the  manufacturers  of  poi- 
soned whisky,  poisoned  tomatoes,  poisoned 
cherries,  poisoned  sausages,  poisoned  mo- 
lasses, poisoned  vinegar,  poisoned  peas, 
poisoned  flavoring  extracts — prevented  the 
passing  of  any  legislation  to  prevent  their 
wholesale  murder. 


Now  we  are  in  sight  of  relief.  These  men 
have  labeled  themselves,  if  they  have  not 
labeled  their  bottles  and  tin  cans.  We 
see  that  courtesy  and  wealth,  even  zeal 
for  reform,  cannot  hide  the  hideousness  of 


138     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

the  man  or  corporation  who  sells  poison 
under  the  guise  of  food.  Yet  even  now 
they  are  not  ashamed,  these  gentlemen 
poisoners.  They  fight  every  attack  upon 
their  nefarious  trade.  They  pour  out 
money  to  lobbyists,  tips  and  stocks  to  legis- 
lators, in  the  hope  of  insuring  the  con- 
tinuance of  their  business.  But  their  day 
is  drawing  to  a  close.  Already  their  agents 
are  clearing  the  shelves  of  the  grocery 
shops.  If  they  persist  in  poisoning  us,  we 
are  at  least  to  know  our  danger. 

fi        ?*        f* 

And  one  of  these  days  public  sentiment 
will  grow  more  serious.  Instead  of  fining 
grocers  who  sell  what  manufacturers  force 
them  to  sell  we  shall  pass  laws  that  will 
reach  the  poisoners  themselves. 

And  then  instead  of  laying  little  fines  for 
"adulteration"  we  shall  treat  these  gentle- 
men poisoners  as  we  treat  vulgar  poisoners. 

We  shall  try  them  for  murder. 


SALVATION  BY  SENATORIAL 
COURTESY 

TF  "conservative"  oracles  divine  truly,  the 
country  is  in  a  desperate  plight.  Re- 
form has  become  an  orgy.  No  wonder 
that  "conservatives" — especially  those 
whose  special  privileges  are  under  scrutiny 
— should  view  the  future  with  alarm. 
What  with  a  nation  rising  to  demand  the 
examination  of  the  land  titles  of  senators, 
the  reduction  of  salaries  of  insurance  dy- 
nasties, the  removal  of  public  funds  from 
banks  that  pay  half  the  current  rate  of 
interest,  the  cancellation  of  contracts 
granted  as  rewards  for  political  jobbery,  a 
law  to  show  that  railroads  are  the  servants, 
not  the  proprietors,  of  the  country,  and  an 
order  to  advance  rather  than  to  "stand 
pat,"  "conservative"  respectability,  like 
the  Czar,  has  need  of  Cossacks. 


But,    after   all,    apprehension   need    not 
grow  too  intense.    There  is  the  "conserva- 

139 


140     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

live"  Senate.  True,  even  it  has  its  mar- 
tyrs. Senators  have  been  indicted  and 
sentenced  to  imprisonment,  and  another 
has  seen  his  reputation  as  the  ideal  gentle- 
man in  politics  shrivel  up  and,  like  his 
office,  blow  away. 

But  these  men,  after  all,  must  have 
been  victims  rather  than  sinners!  Had  the 
public  been  under  the  sway  of  true  sena- 
torial courtesy  instead  of  an  hysterical 
determination  to  reform  things,  they  might 
even  now  be  assisting  their  former  col- 
leagues to  temper  the  madness  of  the 
people ! 

For  in  senatorial  courtesy  lies  salvation. 
The  Senate  will  not  act  while  a  senator  has 
unexploited  legislative  privilege. 


As  long  as  we  have  the  Senate,  the  "con- 
servative" element  of  society  can  sleep 
o'  nights. 

If  public  opinion  and  executive  zeal  over- 
reach themselves  and  threaten  equality  of 
treatment  in  railway  rates,  the  Senate  will 
protect  the  endangered  corporations  from 
demagogic  appeal. 


A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE          141 

If  the  House  of  Representatives,  too  sus- 
ceptible to  that  public  opinion  to  which  its 
members  owe  their  office,  would  hasten  leg- 
islation, the  Senate  will  wisely  guard  the 
people  against  that  impetuosity  which 
would  pass  a  bill  in  a  single  session. 

If  the  business  men  and  the  press  of  a 
great  city  favor  the  retention  of  an  effi- 
cient postmaster,  they  are  delivered  from 
unseen  evil  by  the  foresight  of  a  senator 
who  provides  salvation  in  the  person  of  a 
practical  politician. 

If  the  nation  at  large  demands  relief  from 
a  tariff  that  checks  the  development  of 
important  industries  in  half  the  republic, 
the  senators  from  States  the  size  of  a 
county  in  the  affected  districts  will  pro- 
tect the  republic  and  incidentally  their 
own  interests  from  the  shortsightedness  of 
men  who  want  what  they  ought  not  to 
want. 

t*        fi        /* 

Yes,  the  "conservative"  interests  of  the 
country  have  much  to  thank  the  Senate 
for.  Even  those  of  us  who  belong  to  the 
unimportant  millions  who  are  threatened 


142     THE  MAKING  OP  TO-MORROW 

by  misguided  reformers  may  feel  assured 
that,  however  hasty  may  be  our  action, 
and  however  revolutionary  may  be  our 
well-intentioned  demand  for  fair  play,  we, 
too,  are  under  the  aegis  of  senatorial 
courtesy  and  disinterested  senatorial  "con- 
servatism." 

/*         /*        !* 

And  therefore  we  have  rebelled.  We  have 
served  notice  on  our  senators  that  we  own 
them,  and  that  they  do  not  own  us.  We 
are  seeing  to  it  that  they  are  elected  by 
the  people  and  not  by  too  tractable  Legis- 
latures. If  a  pocket  State  cannot  free  itself 
from  the  feudal  lord  set  over  it  by  financial 
suzerains,  those  of  us  who  live  in  States  that 
are  too  big  for  any  master  except  them- 
selves are  providing  enough  senators  who 
are  representatives,  not  of  sovereign  States 
or  of  sovereign  corporations,  but  of  a  sov- 
ereign people. 

We  propose  to  be  saved  from  "conserva- 
tism"— that  euphemism  for  "privilege." 

We  propose  to  be  saved  from  senatorial 
courtesy — which  is  a  euphemism  for  log- 
rolling. 


A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE          14S 

We  propose  to  be  saved  from  the  Senate 
—which  is  a  euphemism  for  vested  in- 
terest. 

And  we  work  .  out  our  salvation  with  the 
faith  of  men  who  "move  mountains  by 
shovelling  them  away." 


THE  BETTER  SIDE  OF  COMMER- 
CIALISM 


shall  we  teach  our  children? 
The  question  may  seem  superfluous, 
for  what  father  nowadays  teaches  his  chil- 
dren? Boys  and  girls  sleep  at  home,  eat  at 
home,  and  sometimes  get  disciplined  at 
home,  but  we  expect  the  schools  to  teach 
them.  And  we  are  quite  ready  to  let  them 
do  their  best.  The  child  who  learns  his 
lessons  at  his  mother's  knee  is  getting  to 
be  as  much  a  tradition  as  the  boy  who  is 
taught  his  father's  trade. 


It  would  be  foolish  to  find  fault  with  the 
situation.  The  home-taught  child  is  not 
likely  to  grow  up  the  democrat  every 
American  should  be,  and  a  mother  would 
find  that  teaching  reading,  writing,  and 
arithmetic  would  interfere  sadly  with  boil- 
ing potatoes  and  going  to  women's  clubs. 
lit  is  fortunate  for  America  that  it  has 
common  schools,  and  it  is  to  be  devoutly 

144 


A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE  145 

hoped  that  every  citizen  will  make  himself 
a  special  champion  of  the  school-teacher. 
But,  after  all,  there  is  something  that  the 
schools  cannot  teach,  something  which 
fathers  and  mothers  must  teach. 

And  that  particular  lesson  concerns 
money. 

*        <#        # 

Preachers  tell  us  that  commercialism  is 
the  curse  of  the  age.  Perhaps  it  is,  but  it 
is  one  of  those  things  which  are  not  likely 
to  disappear  during  the  lifetime  of  our 
children  or  our  grandchildren.  Good  or 
bad,  it  must  be  assimilated  with  whatever 
else  goes  to  make  up  life.  Undeniably  it 
is  a  danger.  A  man  whose  one  and  only 
supreme  motive  is  money-making  is  a  very 
contemptible  person.  But  did  you  ever 
know  such  a  person?  Would  not  all  your 
friends  repudiate  the  charge  that  money  is 
the  end  of  their  living? 

Men  don't  want  mere  money;  they  want 
to  succeed  in  their  business.  Of  course 
that  means  growing  rich,  but  what  they 
want  is  the  success.  Some  of  them  also 
honestly  want  to  help  their  fellow  men 


146     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

with  their  wealth.  Yet  too  often  this 
ultimate  aim  of  life  is  forgotten,  and  men 
love  the  game  for  itself.  Sometimes  they 
are  forced  to  do  things  they  would  not 
want  other  people  —  at  least  magazine  writ- 
ers —  to  know  about. 

But  paint  the  picture  as  black  as  you 
please  —  and  certainly  it  can  be  drawn 
black  enough  —  there  yet  is  left  a  fact  which 
our  children  ought  to  understand:  They 
and  their  generation  are  going  to  be  richer 
than  we  and  our  generation.  They  must 
be  taught  how  to  use  wealth  in  the  only 
way  which  can  justify  possessing  it. 


If  we  were  expecting  Socialism  to  be  es- 
tablished and  private  capital  to  disappear, 
it  would  be  a  very  different  lesson  we  should 
teach  our  children.  Then  we  should  tell 
them:  "Bait  the  millionaires.  Hold  up 
every  successful  business  man  to  carica- 
ture and  calumny.  Discredit  every  insti- 
jtution  likely  to  perpetuate  or  to  make  pos- 
'sible  the  increase  of  individual  property." 

But  we  are  not  going  to   be   Socialists. 

Our  children  must  live  in  a  commercial 


A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE          147 

age,  as  we  are  living  in  a  commercial  age. 
To  teach  them  to  hate  the  wealthy  class 
and  at  the  same  time  to  teach  them  how  to 
grow  rich  is  madly  inconsistent. 

To  laugh  at  a  rich  man  because  he  does 
not  spend  his  money  in  luxury  and  then 
laugh  at  him  the  more  for  using  it  in  phi- 
lanthropy is  to  put  a  premium  on  cynical 
self-indulgence. 

A  boy  who  is  to  devote  the  best  years  of 
his  life  to  making  money  should  not  be 
taught  that  commercialism  is  bad,  but  he 
should  be  taught  that  it  is  a  curse  when  it 
leads  to  dishonesty,  and  despicable  when 
it  makes  men  vulgar  and  selfish  and 
arrogant. 

fi         #         fi 

You  do  not  need  to  be  a  demagogue  in 
order  to  teach  your  child  to  despise  a  suc- 
cessful rogue.  As  society  will  be  consti- 
tuted when  he  is  a  man,  wealth  will  be 
an  enormous  power  for  good.  Hospitals 
and  churches  and  libraries  and  universities 
and  medical  institutes  and  pension  funds 
and  ministries  to  the  needy  and  unfor- 
tunate— these  are  not  evils.  Neither  are 


148     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

art  collections  and  museums  and  the  thou- 
sand and  one  other  means  of  making  life 
something  more  than  mere  existence.  Yet 
until  Socialism  brings  in  its  paper  millen- 
nium these  good  things  will  be  the  fruit  of 
commercialism. 

We  may  trust  public  opinion  to  make  it 
difficult  for  our  children  to  grow  rich 
through  legal  dishonesty.  Can  we  as  cer- 
tainly trust  American  parents  to  see  that 
the  rich  men  of  the  future  use  their  wealth 
fraternally — not  as  purveyors  of  charity, 
but  as  partners  with  society? 

r 


THE  LUXURY  OF  WAR 

all  have  our  luxuries.  Some  of  us 
have  our  steam  yachts,  some  our 
automobiles,  some  our  books,  and  some  of 
us  our  bad  habits;  but  luxuries  we  must 
have,  cost  what  they  will. 

So,  too,  with  the  world.  It  has  its  luxury 
— war. 

ft        t*        # 

Of  course  all  good  Christians  believe 
that  men  ought  not  to  fight,  but  so  do  we 
believe  that  men  ought  not  to  spend  mpney 
for  things  they  cannot  afford.  But  there 
are  always  extenuating  circumstances,  and 
it  is  always  easier  to  run  in  debt  for  lux- 
uries than  for  necessities. 

In  the  days  of  the  Roman  empire  a 
standing  army  of  one  hundred  and  twenty 
thousand  men  kept  order  in  the  country 
surrounding  the  Mediterranean.  That,  of 
course,  was  before  we  achieved  our  present 
high  civilization.  In  these  same  countries 
to-day  there  are  probably  two  million  men 

149 


150     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

under  arms,  and  as  many  more  in  Germany 
and  Russia. 

But  Rome  was  relatively  poor. 

All  of  these  men  have  been  taken  from 
industry  at  the  age  when  they  ought  to  be 
learning  their  trades.  They  have  to  be 
supported  by  the  state  and  have  to  live 
off  of  other  people.  But  an  army  is  a 
luxury  which  civilization  enjoys.  All  the 
world,  and  especially  every  woman,  loves 
a  uniform. 

Why,  then,  should  Peace  Conferences 
and  Hague  Conferences  try  to  make  us 
more  economical?  Have  not  our  re- 
formers learned  that  as  long  as  a  man  or 
a  nation's  credit  is  good  he  can  afford 
all  the  luxuries  he  can  borrow  money  to 
pay  for? 

fi         f*         f* 

And  then  there  is  the  science  of  war. 
If  one  man  kills  another  to  avenge  a  per- 
sonal wrong,  it  is,  of  course,  plain  murder; 
but  when  he  and  a  hundred  thousand  other 
people  unite  to  kill  another  one  hundred 
thousand  people  for  a  national  insult,  it  is 
military  science. 


A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE          151 

Why  should  Peace  Conferences  stand  in 
the  way  of  the  development  of  science? 

A  modern  battleship  will  cost  enough  to 
endow  a  dozen  small  colleges.  It  will  be 
sent  to  the  junk  heap  in  twenty  years  if  it 
does  not  go  to  the  bottom  before. 

But  education  is  only  a  necessity.  The 
battleship  is  a  luxury. 

It  costs  enough  to  support  a  nation's 
military  establishment  to  give  old-age  pen- 
sions, to  build  hospitals,  libraries,  art 
museums,  parks,  and  raise  the  salaries  of 
mail  carriers.  But  a  nation  gladly  sacri- 
fices these  secondary  goods  that  it  may 
afford  the  luxury  of  being  ready  to  kill  a 
few  hundred  thousand  of  its  neighbors  and 
develop  field  hospitals  for  itself. 

i*        <#         f* 

One  of  these  days  we  shall  come  to  our 
economic  senses  if  not  to  our  moral  senses. 
At  that  time  we  shall  hear  no  more 
silly  talk  about  the  greatness  of  war  and 
of  the  patriot  who  must  kill  somebody  in 
order  to  be  patriotic.  The  world  will  do 
without  cannons  to  smash  people  to  pieces, 
rifles  to  bore  holes  in  their  bones,  bayonets 


152     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

to  stick  into  their  bodies,  and  mines  to 
blow  up  their  transports,  and  will  use  the 
money  that  these  luxuries  cost  for  sensible 
purposes. 

When  that  time  comes  we  may  not  have 
as  many  processions  of  soldiers,  but  we 
shall  not  be  squandering  our  money  on  a 
luxury  that  reduces  wealth,  breeds  social 
inequalities,  and  terrorizes  neighbors  with 
a  fear  of  misery. 

But  it  takes  nations,   just  as  it  takes 

plain  folks,  a  long  time  to  grow  sensible. 
r"1 


PRACTICING  NATIONAL  MIND 
CURE 

f  I  THEY  tell  us  that  we  are  to  have  pros- 
J-  perity  for  the  next  few  years  —  obtru- 
sive, aggressive,  implacable  prosperity. 
Whereat  some  of  us  rejoice  and  those  of 
us  who  are  on  salary  tremble.  But  the 
prophecy,  we  take  it,  is  true. 

We  have  been  passing  through  the  most 
irrational  period  of  hard  times  in  the 
history  of  finance.  We  have  tried  to  dam 
optimism,  and  now  that  the  sluice  gates 
are  open  the  probability  is  the  dam  will 

go- 

And  —  never  mind  the  mixture  of  figures 

—  when  optimism  goes  on  an  orgy  there  is 
money  to  be  made. 


We  are  certainly  a  most  remarkable 
people.  With  enormous  crops,  with  ex- 
traordinary output  of  mines,  with  farmers 
lending  money  to  Wall  Street,  and  with 
day  laborers  getting  more  money  than 

153 


154     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

college  professors,  we  have  been  insisting 
upon  our  poverty. 

We  became  commercial  hypochondriacs. 
We  mistook  an  acute  attack  of  financial  in- 
digestion for  industrial  nephritis. 

Then  we  began  to  discuss  the  relative 
merits  of  undertakers  on  Wall  Street. 

f*        ?*         fi 

Now,  however,  that  we  have  practiced 
faith  cure,  we  are  as  convinced  of  our 
health  as  we  were  convinced  of  our  disease. 

All  of  which  argues  that  the  linotype  is 
mightier  than  the  check-book. 

,*         ,*         ,* 

With  the  remembrance  of  the  fat  years 
of  the  past  to  give  us  pause,  it  would  be 
strange  if  there  were  not  those  who  rather 
dread  the  fat  years  of  the  future.  Moral- 
izers  are  more  apt  to  thank  God  for  days 
of  misery  than  for  days  of  joy.  They 
think  that  people's  souls  thrive  better  on 
economy  than  they  do  on  large  bank 
balances,  just  as  alluvial  farms  are  better 
for  corn  than  for  P9ets.  Indeed,  a 
thoroughgoing  moralizer  welcomes  misfor- 


A  NATION'S  CONSCIENCE          155 

tune  as  a  writer  of  epitaphs  welcomes 
death. 

And  even  if  a  man  is  not  quite  so  con- 
vinced that  virtue  thrives  best  on 
melancholy,  he  cannot  but  wonder  what 
these  years  of  prosperity  are  to  bring. 

Of  course  they  will  bring  fortunes  and 
automobiles  and  trips  to  Europe  and  sum- 
mer cottages  and  new  clothes  and  college 
diplomas.  But  they  will  bring  also  a 
higher  standard  of  living,  habits  of  easy 
spending,  a  disparagement  of  thrift  and 
distorted  perspectives  of  the  values  in  life.  ^ 

The  one  set  of  effects  is  as  certain  as  the 
other.  The  impartial  historian  of  the 
future — and  impartial  historians,  you  will 
recall,  are  always  in  the  future — will  be 
very  apt  to  find  himself  in  doubt  as  to 
whether  the  standard  of  national  con- 
science does  not  rise  and  fall  inversely  with 
the  rate  of  bank  discount. 

But  even  the  impartial  historian,  we  are 
inclined  to  think,  will  have  to  admit  that 
the  prosperous  years  beginning  with  1909 
are  in  many  ways  an  exception  to  the 
general  rule.  We  do  not  expect,  of  course, 
that  they  will  be  marked  by  millennial  re- 


156     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

gard  for  poetic  ideals  of  righteousness,  but, 
unless  all  signs  fail,  they  will  not  be  marked 
by  that  exploiting  of  natural  resources  and 
public  morals  which  has  marked  so  many 
other  periods  of  rapidly  increasing  wealth. 
Public  conscience  in  America  is  vastly 
more  in  evidence  to-day  than  it  was  in  the 
dark  years  of  1893-97.  Law  has  ceased  to 
be  a  rhetorical  flourish  to  be  attached  to 
perorations  uttered  by  men  who  meta- 
phorically wink  at  their  own  praise  of 
honor. 

The    nation    itself    has    begun    to    take 
honesty  seriously. 


We  have  our  Christian  Science,  our 
Emmanuel  Movements,  and  our  New 
Thought  to  help  us  cure  our  bodily  ills 
and  to  make  us  feel  that  the  way  to  stay 
healthy  is  to  realize  that  we  are  healthy. 
Why  not  practice  the  same  sort  of  cure 
in  our  body  politic?  In  fact,  we  already 
are.  We  are  practicing  cure  by  suggestion. 
We  have  thrown  off  fear  of  bankruptcy. 
We  can  throw  off  fear  of  national  corrup- 
tion by  believing  in  national  honesty. 


IV 
THE  EXTENSION  OF  DEMOCRACY 


157 


MUST  DEMOCRACY  ABDICATE? 

HHHERE  is  to-day  an  incipient  but  wide- 
spread  reaction  toward  some  form  of 
dictatorship.  A  city  has  difficulty  with  its 
administration;  it  proceeds  to  increase  the 
power  of  its  executive.  The  great  Amer- 
ican public  is  too  busy  to  attend  the  caucus 
or  to  discuss  in  detail  political  measures; 
it  submits  to  be  governed  by  a  machine 
under  the  control  of  a  single  man.  A 
legislative  body  by  the  force  of  circum- 
stances feels  compelled  to  delegate  its 
power  to  committees;  its  speaker  legislates 
with  a  gavel.  The  judiciary  is  not  content 
to  pass  upon  laws,  but  legislates  and  ad- 
ministers by  injunction. 


In  this  tendency  democracy  confronts  no 
merely  rhetorical  danger.  A  government 
must  be  representative  if  it  is  to  be  demo- 
cratic; but  an  executive  officer  may  be  no 
more  representative  than  an  hereditary 
monarch.  The  Legislature  is  the  corner 

159 


160     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

stone  of  democracy.  What  will  be  left 
when  it  passes  into  desuetude?  If  Legis- 
latures surrender  to  a  speaker  and  his 
committees;  if  cities  put  all  power  into 
the  hands  of  a  mayor;  if  people,  Legisla- 
tures, and  executive  are  to  be  at  the  mercy 
of  judges  who  issue  injunctions,  just  where 
does  any  genuine  democracy  appear? 


Democracy  will  be  more  than  a  name 
as  long  as  men  believe  in  representative 
bodies.  This  faith  cannot  survive  a  con- 
viction that  such  bodies  are  hopelessly 
corrupt.  Democracy  is  doomed  in  America 
as  it  was  doomed  in  Rome  unless  "boo- 
dling"  is  made  impossible.  We  would  rather 
delegate  power  to  an  incorruptible  execu- 
tive than  be  governed  by  corruptible 
representatives. 

And,  therefore,  to  avoid  our  own  re- 
sponsibility, we  strengthen  the  hands  of 
our  mayors  and  governors  and  subject  a 
jcity  to  a  State  Legislature. 


You  cannot  build  a  marble  palace  out  of 


unbaked  bricks.  There  can  be  no  democ- 
racy without  democrats.  Equality  must 
be  based  on  something  other  than  common 
misery  or  common  misfortune.  Coopera- 
tion merely  to  obtain  rights  is  a  travesty 
of  fraternity.  No  democracy  can  hope  to 
survive  in  which  the  people  distrust  their 
institutions  or  are  themselves  ignorant  and 
without  moral  ideals. 

An  idealless  democracy  is  a  breeding 
place  for  political  corruption. 

It  has  been  the  singular  mission  of  Chris- 
tianity that,  possessed  though  it  is  of  no 
political  program,  whenever  it  has  been 
brought  straight  to  the  hearts  of  a  people 
it  has  made  toward  political  equality.  A 
genuine  Christian  is  a  democrat,  a  real 
Christian  community  is  a  fraternity.  With 
all  its  faults  such  a  democracy  believes  in 
discussion,  and  it  elects  Legislatures  to 
legislate.  It  believes  that  the  executive 
should  do  the  will  of  a  legislative  body,  not 
his  own  will.  It  believes  that  the  judiciary 
should  pronounce  upon  laws  already  made, 
not  assist  in  making  them.  And  it  be- 
lieves all  this  will  result  in  good  because  it 
believes  in  the  sanity  of  righteousness.  It 


162     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

has  no  confidence  in  bad  men.  It  has 
full  confidence  in  the  judgment  of  a  com- 
munity of  good  men. 

,#        #        # 

Americans  are  not  so  engrossed  in 
money-getting  as  to  be  indifferent  to  poli- 
tics. Possibly  they  may  have  been  once; 
but  even  if  that  be  true,  they  are  so  no 
longer.  Nor  are  they  really  distrustful  of 
democracy.  What  they  fear  is  not  legisla- 
tion, but  unending  and  resultless  talk. 
They  believe  that  honest  men  in  honest 
discussion,  whether  in  house  or  committee, 
can  reach  reasonable  and  practicable  de- 
cisions. They  want  those  decisions  reached 
promptly  and  administered  impartially. 
The  American  public  is  long-suffering,  but 
it  is  losing  patience  with  legislative  incom- 
petence. Unless  all  signs  fail,  the  time  is 
not  distant  when  that  man  will  commit 
political  suicide  who  attempts  to  use  his 
position  in  a  Legislature  to  block  public 
business  for  the  purpose  of  blackmailing 
corporations.  There  are  more  eyes  watch- 
ing legislators  to-day  than  ever  in  our 
history.  The  wheels  of  a  righteous  pub- 


EXTENSION  OF  DEMOCRACY      163 

lie  opinion   grind   slowly,   but   they   grind 
none  the  less. 


We  do  not  believe  that  corruption  is 
ineradicable.  If  honest  men  irrespective  of 
party  lines  come  to  the  support  of  legisla- 
tive honor,  both  in  city  and  in  State,  real 
democracy  is  assured.  It  is  not  a  question 
of  political  machines,  but  of  the  men  who 
shall  constitute  the  machine.  Still  less  is  it 
a  matter  of  ending  national  political  par- 
ties. It  is  not  even  a  question  of  educa- 
tion. It  is  a  matter  of  curing  the  evils  of 
democracy  by  more  democracy.  As  far  as 
America  is  concerned,  this  means  new  faith 
in  our  representative  bodies,  and  this  in 
turn  means  more  honest  men  in  politics 
and  more  honest  men  out  of  politics. 


{      A* 


THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  PLAIN 
CITIZEN 

THE  plain  citizen  is  getting  suspicious  of 
the  game  of  politics  as  it  has  been 
played.  Until  within  a  few  years  he  has 
not  taken  government  very  seriously.  He 
has  preferred  "campaigns."  With  that 
bland  optimism  which  makes  a  church 
more  interested  in  new  converts  than  in 
mature  saints,  and  which  makes  it  easier 
to  sell  stock  in  a  company  before  it  has 
assets  than  after  it  has  begun  operations, 
the  plain  citizen  has  annually,  biennially, 
and  quadrennially  spent  money  and  meas- 
ureless energy  in  electioneering.  Once 
his  candidates  were  elected  or  defeated 
he  has  lost  interest.  The  good  deed  had 
been  done.  The  new  officials  were  Amer- 
ican citizens  and  could  be  trusted  to  govern 
honestly,  sagely,  and  inerrantly. 

In  the  meantime  he  had  to  make  money. 


Of  late  years  the  plain  American's  optim- 

164 


EXTENSION  OF  DEMOCRACY      165 

ism  has  been  jarred.  He  has  discovered 
that  politics  is  something  more  than  ora- 
tory, torch-light  processions,  and  shouting, 
and  he  has  his  suspicions  of  officials  who 
regard  their  offices  as  private  assets. 

He  has  come  to  see  that  government  has 
more  duties  than  to  arrest  burglars  and 
maintain  a  navy  to  frighten  foreigners  into 
paying  their  honest  debts. 

He  has  come  to  see  that  respectability, 
culture,  and  even  ecclesiastical  enthusiasm, 
do  not  guarantee  a  man  immunity  from 
being  a  grafter  or  the  source  of  graft. 

And  more  than  this,  he  has  come  to  feel 
that  he  wants  his  government  to  govern 
and  not  be  governed. 

In  a  word,  he  has  rebelled. 

He  is  not  altogether  clear  as  to  what  he 
wants,  but  just  now  he  has  very  clear 
opinions  as  to  some  things  he  does  not 
want.  And  among  these  is  the  sight  of  aN 
few  dozen  men  arrogating  to  themselves 
under  some  corporate  title  powers  which 
rival  those  of  the  nation. 

,*        ,*         t* 
You    cannot    silence    this    plain    citizen 


166     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

to-day  by  calling  him  a  Socialist.  You 
might  have  done  so  ten  years  ago.  He  is 
not  a  Socialist,  and  he  is  not  hostile  to 
trusts  as  a  means  of  reducing  costs  of  pro- 
duction. But  he  does  not  want  to  be  gov- 
erned by  them.  What  he  intends  to  pre- 
-,  vent  is  the  rule-or-ruin  policy  of  the  group 
of  men  who  are  slowly  absorbing  the  con- 
trolling interests  in  corporations  of  national 
importance. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  gentlemen  in 
question  sense  the  situation. 


The  plain  citizen  does  not  know  just 
how  railroads  and  other  corporations  of 
national  influence  are  to  be  regulated.  He 
does  not  care.  He  has  elected  the 
President  to  find  out.  If  Congress  opposes 
the  President — another  election  will  come. 

Here  is  a  new  conception  of  government, 
determined  on  finding  a  protection  against 
the  concentration  of  economic  power  in 
non-political  bodies.  The  people  at  large, 
and  especially  the  people  of  the  middle 
West,  believe  that  corporations,  as  well  as 
individuals,  must  conform  to  law.  At  the 


EXTENSION  OF  DEMOCRACY      167 

present  moment,  the  plain  citizen  is  ready 
to  sacrifice  any  man  or  any  group  of  men 
who  opposes  his  new  conviction. 

This  new  spirit  marks  a  new  epoch. 
Any  administration  will  be  strong  in  the 
same  proportion  as  it  disregards  the  hostil- 
ity of  those  politicians  who  are  the  lingering 
survivals  of  a  different  spirit  and  a  different 
epoch.  The  plain  citizen,  aroused,  may  be 
trusted  to  rid  the  government  of  inflamed 
anachronisms,  institutional  or  human. 


RATIONAL  JINGOISM 

you  ever  go  to  an  old-fashioned 
Fourth  of  July  celebration  in  New 
England?  If  not,  you  are  to  be  pitied. 
Those  of  us  who  have  been  more  fortunate 
will  never  forget  it. 

Early  in  the  morning  you  were  waked  by 
church  bells  and  the  gun,  that,  do  your 
best  to  prevent,  somebody  always  fired  be- 
fore you  could  fire  yours. 

Then  there  was  the  procession  of  Hor- 
ribles, a  group  of  fellow  townsmen  des- 
perately disguised  and  desperately  set  on 
being  comical. 

Then  the  procession  formed,  and  the 
band  and  militia  company  and  towns- 
people escorted  the  Distinguished  Orator 
to  the  grove.  There  a  little  girl  dressed  in 
red,  white,  and  blue  read  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  the  minister  prayed,  and 
the  Distinguished  Orator  defied  Great  Brit- 
ain and  the  whole  world.  Then  you  sang 
I  "America  "  —all  of  it. 

And  after  that  you  went  home  rejoicing 

168 


EXTENSION  OF  DEMOCRACY      169 

that  you  lived  in  Columbia,  the  home  of 
the  free  and  the  brave. 


Do  men  still  celebrate  the  Fourth? 

Of  course  we  and  our  children  have  our 
firecrackers  by  day  and  our  economical  but 
unquestionably  respectable  fireworks  by 
night  —  pin-wheels  and  rockets  and  coals  of 
fire.  But  the  celebration  of  the  day  in  any 
real  sense  seems  to  have  disappeared.  The 
old-time  "Fourth"  has  followed  Fast  Day 
to  that  bourne  from  which  New  England 
holidays  —  barring  Thanksgiving  —  have 
never  returned. 

And  nothing  has  really  taken  its  place. 
Least  of  all,  this  new  day  of  mingled  vul- 
garity and  lockjaw. 

Noise  is  no  more  patriotism  than  burnt 
fingers  are  national  self-sacrifice.  The  ris- 
ing generation  has  all  but  no  knowledge  of 
the  real  meaning  of  the  day.  Ask  your  boy. 

He  will  tell  you  that  it  is  the  day  on 
which  the  "Cubs"  play  a  double-header. 

#        /*        fi 
It  seems  a  pity  to  lose  such  an  oppor- 


170     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

tunity  to  educate  ourselves  in  patriotism. 
We  ought  to  redeolicate  the  day  to  the 
serious  attempt  to  bring  home  the  mean- 
ing of  America  to  our  boys  and  girls,  and 
especially  to  the  thousands  of  foreigners 
who  are  to  be  our  fellow  citizens,  and, 
later,  the  government. 

There  are  a  good  many  thousand  people 
who  ought  to  be  taught  a  rational  jingoism. 

,#         #         & 

For  what  does  this  republic  really  stand? 
Is  our  political  discussion  to  degenerate 
into  forming  programs  for  prosperity? 

Did  our  fathers  die  that  we  might  cut 
our  coupons? 

Why  not  have  one  day  in  the  year  when 
we  study  what  our  country  really  means 
and  find  ourselves  growing  proud  that  we 
are  Americans? 

Middle-aged  people  are  in  danger  of 
growing  soggy  and  slouchy.  The  middle- 
aged  nation  is  likely  to  follow  their  ex- 
ample. Really,  to  know  what  the  Amer- 
ican spirit  is,  a  man  needs  to  go  to  our 
great  Southwest,  where  men  are  building 
towns  and  cities  and  States  and  find  that 


EXTENSION  OF  DEMOCRACY      171 

joy  in  creating  which  America  once  felt  as 
a  whole. 

Our  minds  are  so  full  of  the  distress  and 
the  inequality  and  poverty  of  our  country 
that  we  sometimes  forget  its  vigor  and 
hopefulness  and  fundamental  honesty. 

Let  us  have  a  day  when  we  get  together 
and  tell  each  other  we  believe  in  ourselves 
and  in  our  institutions  and  in  our  future 
— a  day  in  which  we  forget  our  grafting 
politicians,  the  tariff,  the  trusts,  and  the 
yellow  peril. 

And  on  this  day,  at  least,  let  us  put  all 
our  critics  in  the  front  seat  and  see  to  it 
they  don't  escape  until  the  speeches  are 
finished. 


PLAYING  WITH  SOCIAL 
DISCONTENT 


upon  a  time  there  was  a  French 
queen  who  heard  that  her  subjects 
were  starving  because  they  were  unable  to 
get  bread.  "Why  don't  the  poor,  dear 
people  eat  cake?"  asked  she.  You  have 
heard  the  story  before  and  thought  it  very 
silly,  but  it  pictures  the  attitude  of  a  good 
many  people  we  know.  Of  course  nobody 
is  starving  nowadays  —  at  least  not  enough 
people  to  talk  about  —  yet  we  see  every- 
where discontent  among  the  masses. 


Some  of  us  who  have  enough  to  eat  and 
drink  and  be  reasonably  merry  feel  ag- 
grieved at  this. 

Why  should  the  people  be  discontented 
with  their  wages?  Our  salaries  are  good. 

Why  should  they  be  discontented  with 
the  church?  We  go  occasionally  and  enjoy 
the  singing. 

Why  should  they  be  discontented  with 

172 


EXTENSION  OF  DEMOCRACY      173 

philanthropy?  None  of  us  gives  any  more 
than  he  can  help. 

Why  should  they  be  discontented  with 
politics?  Have  we  not  prosperity? 

The  masses  are  ungrateful  when  they 
insist  that  they  are  not  satisfied  with  what 
we  are  getting  out  of  life. 

Does  not  this  remind  you  of  the  French 
queen? 


The  arrogant  lawlessness  of  respectable 
people  gives  bitterness  to  the  situation. 
They  want  legislation  against  strikers,  but 
hold  themselves  superior  to  law  when  it 
comes  to  high  finance  and  building  clubs 
in  prohibition  districts. 

You  momentarily  share  the  feeling  of 
the  masses  toward  such  folk  when  an 
automobile  races  along  your  street  with 
death  before  and  stench  behind.  Your 
estimate  of  the  occupants  of  that  automo- 
bile is  first  cousin  to  the  sentiment  that 
chased  the  nobility  out  of  France. 


Discontent    is    not    necessarily    an    evi- 


174     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

dence  of  social  disease.     It  may  be  the 
outcome   of  vitality   and  hope.     No   real 
lover  of  his  kind  wants  everybody  to  be 
comfortable.     If  everybody  were  satisfied,  1 
the  world  would  vegetate. 

But  there  is  discontent  and  discontent. 
The  tired  man  thinks  he  needs  a  "bracer," 
and  some  discontented  people  are  apt  to 
think  they  need  revolution.  At  least  they 
want  an  orgy  of  demagogism. 

One  great  problem  which  faces  us  to-day, 
accordingly,  is  the  education  of  discontent. 
You  cannot  muzzle  it;  you  cannot  end  it. 
You  can  give  it  better  ideals. 

The  political  aspirations  of  the  masses 
deserve  something  better  than  cartoons, 
denunciation,  and  complacent  indifference. 
They  are  making  history  and  will  make 
more. 

f*        1*        t* 

Those  whom  a  rebellious  public  opinion 
will  drive  out  of  office,  privileges  and  re- 
taining fees  first  drive  mad. 

The  present  decade  will   show  whether 
the  lords  of  our  modern   feudalism   f  airly  | 
grasp  the  situation. 


EXTENSION  OF  DEMOCRACY      175 

It  will  be  well  for  them  if  they  do  grasp 
it.  Discontent,  when  once  it  is  a  part  of 
public  opinion,  is  likely  to  resort  to  ex- 
treme measures. 


THE  CHARLATAN  IN  REFORM 

T  TOW  easy  it  is  to  join  in  ventilating 
*•  *•  the  faults  of  our  neighbors!  There 
are  a  good  many  men  who  apparently  think 
virtue  consists  in  rebuking  other  people's 

jdns.  They  are  keen  to  testify  before  anl 
investigating  committee,  even  though  they 
wax  indignant  when  the  committee's  work 
extends  to  corporations  in  which  they  hold 
stock.  As  matters  often  look  it  seems  as  if 
reform  were  in  danger  of  being  overworked. 
Everybody  seems  to  be  eager  to  improve 
W  somebody's  else  morals.  Reformers  range 
from  those  who  are  devoting  their  entire 
life  to  accomplishing  a  specific  end  to 
would-be  reformers  looking  for  a  job.  In 
point  of  honesty  they  range  from  martyrs 

Ito  charlatans. 


Just  now  the  charlatan  reformer  is  too 
considerably  in  evidence.  We  are  in  un 
era  of  confession.  Boodlers  confess  to  es- 
cape punishment.  Good  men  confess  to 

176 


EXTENSION  OP  DEMOCRACY      177 

ease  their  conscience.  Rascals  confess  be- 
cause they  haven't  any  conscience.  Gen- 
tlemen with  active  imagination  confess  in 
the  interest  of  their  income.  It  is  the 
charlatan's  Golden  Age.  A  man's  peni- 
tence has  come  to  be  his  largest  financial 
asset.  Reputations  are  butchered  to  make 
newspaper  and  magazine  circulation. 

It  is  a  sorry  business,  this  of  the  charla- 
tan in  reform;  fit  to  be  classed  with  that 
of  the  charlatan  in  medicine.  To  uncover 
the  sins  of  one's  associates  and  oneself  as  a 
commercial  venture  and  to  advertise  spe- 
cifics or  cure-alls  is  a  genuine  menace  to 
public  morals.  It  is  one  thing  for  the 
department  of  health  to  open  up  a  city's 
sewers.  It  would  be  quite  another  thing  if 
sewer  opening  became  a  commercially  lu- 
crative fad.  A  man  is  not  a  prophet  be- 
cause he  lays  bare  social  evils.  He  may  be 
a  common  yellow  journalist.  It  is  one 
thing  to  bare  evils  in  the  name  of  God;  it 
is  quite  another  thing  to  be  a  scandal- 
monger at  so  much  a  thousand  words. 


There  are  many  evils  in  our  national  life 


178     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

needing  exposure.  Some  of  them  are  being 
exposed  with  the  honesty  and  impartiality 
of  the  Hebrew  prophet.  There  is  no  health- 
ier sign  in  American  life  than  the  determi- 
nation to  know  the  worst  in  politics  and  in 
business.  Whoever  is  honestly  helping  the 
American  people  to  know  such  wrongs,  we 
honor  and  will  assist.  But  the  true  re- 
former rights  wrongs.  He  does  not  exploit 
them  commercially. 


We  are  certainly  overdoing  the  matter  of 
exposing  abuses.  There  is  much  evil  in 
to-day's  life,  but  there  is  more  good.  Most 
of  the  evils  are  the  penalty  which  we  pay 
for  the  good.  To  forget  this  is  to  expose 
ourselves  to  demagogism  or  hysterics.  You 
cannot  have  a  garden  without  weeds. 
You  cannot  keep  house  without  a  garbage 
box.  But  he  would  be  a  common  slanderer 
who  said  that  his  neighbor's  garden  was  all 
weeds  and  a  common  cad  who  talked  only 
of  his  neighbor's  garbage  box. 

,#        /*        ,* 
What  we  fear  most  in  this  orgy  of  confes- 


EXTENSION  OF  DEMOCRACY      179 

sion  is  that  we  shall  be  so  disgusted  with 
the  babel  of  the  charlatans  that  we  shall 
cease  to  listen  to  the  voice  of  the  prophet. 
In  the  present  situation  that  man  and  that 
publication  can  do  most  for  the  future 
which,  in  addition  to  appeals  to  the  public 
conscience,  will  also  cooperate  with  the 
great  constructive  forces  born  of  national 
life.  Denunciation  is  not  constructive.  * 
Honesty  may  not  be  as  picturesque  as 
rascality,  but  it  is  more  common  and 
better  worth  studying.  Class  prejudice  is 
not  conscientiousness,  and  scandalmonger- 
ing  is  not  reform.  The  future  lies  not  with 
the  grafter,  but  with  the  slowly  rising  tide 
of  public  conscience.  You  cannot  sweep 
that  back. 


REBUILDING  THE  NATION  ON 
INTERSTATE  COMMERCE 


fathers  built  the  United  States 
upon  the  doctrine  of  natural  rights. 
We  are  rebuilding  the  nation  on  interstate 
commerce. 

Once  upon  a  time  we  had  need  of  a  con- 
stitution with  a  great  many  sections,  sen- 
tences, and  clauses.  We  were  troubled 
about  many  things;  now  one  is  sufficient. 
Our  legislators  have  shown  us  that  nearly 
any  power  the  federal  government  needs 
can  be  gained  from  the  single  clause  which 
gives  Congress  the  power  to  regulate  inter- 
state commerce. 

If  we  want  to  regulate  rates  and  rebates 
and  passes  on  railways,  interstate  com- 
merce gives  us  the  right. 

If  we  want  to  inspect  the  packing  houses 
and  put  labels  on  canned  goods,  interstate 
commerce  tells  us  that  we  may. 

If  we  want  to  control  the  express  com- 
panies and  the  sleeping  cars  and  the  pipe 
lines,  put  air  brakes  on  freight  trains,  and 

180 


EXTENSION  OF  DEMOCRACY      181 

say  how  many  hours  cattle  can  be  in 
transport,  interstate  commerce  gives  us  the 
power. 

If  we  want  to  keep  manufacturers  from 
poisoning  us  with  formaldehyde  and  bo- 
racic  acid,  interstate  commerce  provides 
the  antidote. 

Yet  there  is  nothing  revolutionary  in  all 
this.  It  is  rather  an  illustration  of  the  fact 
that  politics  is  at  bottom  a  matter  of  dol- 
lars and  cents.  Sometimes  this  fact  gets 
obscured  by  oratory,  treaty  making,  and 
the  slaying  of  thousands  of  people  accord- 
ing to  military  rules.  But  sooner  or  later 
the  real  nature  of  government  appears. 

Fortunate  indeed  is  that  nation  which 
finds  in  its  economic  power  the  key  to 
reform. 


GIVE  US  BACK  OUR  RIVERS! 

/CIVILIZATION,  like  Moses,  got  its  first 
^^  start  on  water.  Until  recent  times 
there  never  was  a  nation  that  did  not 
paddle  or  sail  its  way  into  history.  Look 
in  your  general  histories  to  find  the  proof. 

The  United  States  was  born  of  water.  It 
was  easier  to  get  to  New  Orleans  from 
Montreal  by  way  of  the  Great  Lakes  and 
the  Mississippi  than  over  land. 

In  those  early  days  rivers  were  thorough- 
fares. They  continued  to  be  thoroughfares 
until  the  middle  of  the  last  century. 

Now  they  are  used  mostly  for  sewerage 
and  drinking  water. 


I 


There  are  a  few  cities  in  the  United 
States  that  have  been  bright  enough  to 
maintain  river  commerce.  Among  them  is 
New  York. 

Thanks  to  the  Hudson  and  the  Erie 
Canal,  New  York  is  a  river  port  as  well  as 
a  railway  terminal.  It  has  a  monopoly 

182 


EXTENSION  OF  DEMOCRACY      183 

worth  keeping.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  New 
York  financiers  and  statesmen  are  not  keen 
to  push  projects  for  a  waterway  through 
the  Great  Lakes  to  the  Gulf? 


Nature  meant  the  commerce  of  the  cen- 
ter of  the  continent  to  drain  southward. 
But  how  can  nature  hope  to  compete  with 
a  power  that  bridges  over  or  tunnels  under 
her  rivers? 

Yet  sooner  or  later  nature  knows  that 
human  nature  will  come  to  its  senses.  It 
takes  no  great  genius  to  discover  that  the 
Ohio,  Tennessee,  Illinois,  Mississippi,  Mis- 
souri, and  the  Arkansas  might  very  easily 
be  joined  by  canals  with  the  Great  Lakes. 

Nature  gave  the  rivers;  Chicago  has  dug 
the  canal.  Make  them  all  navigable! 

They  are  raw  material  ready  for  a 
transportation  system  which  will  make  the 
Nile  look  like  a  strip  of  litmus  paper. 

fi        #        S* 

The  rivers  themselves  seem  anxious  to 
work.  Not  having  farm  products  to  trans- 
port they  are  transporting  farms. 


184     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

There  is  a  good  deal  of  agricultural  land 
of  Missouri  and  Illinois,  not  to  mention 
half  a  dozen  other  States,  to  be  seen  in  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico. 

Dig  up  a  few  sand  bars,  build  a  few 
levees,  and  blow  up  a  few  dams,  and  the 
rivers  will  be  sobered.  Then  the  region 
between  the  Alleghenies  and  the  Rockies, 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  the  north  pole  can 
get  its  goods  to  market  without  worrying 
about  the  shortage  of  freight  cars. 


If  it  is  for  the  interest  of  the  country 
that  we  should  have  harbors  on  the  Pacific 
and  the  Atlantic,  it  is  just  as  necessary 
that  there  should  be  wharves  and  light- 
houses and  fourteen-foot  channels  on  the 
big  rivers. 

The  Middle  West  does  not  begrudge  the 
money  spent  to  make  harbors  at  Wiscasset 
and  Seattle,  but  it  wants  to  see  ocean 
steamers  at  its  docks.  Memphis  and  Saint 
Louis  and  Keokuk  and  Chicago  and  Du- 
luth,  and  every  other  river  and  lake  town, 
want  to  be  seaports. 

When  that  time  comes  —  and  unless   all 


EXTENSION  OF  DEMOCRACY      185 

signs  fail  it  will  not  be  long  in  coming— 
the  railroads  will  not  be  poorer,  but  Amer- 
ica will  be  a  good  deal  richer.  Wheat  will 
not  rot  in  piles  waiting  for  overtaxed 
factories  to  build  freight  cars  and  engines; 
and  the  dangers  from  brittle  steel  rails  can 
be  forgotten  in  the  excitement  of  steamboat  / 
races  a  thousand  miles  long. 

And,  since  every  prophecy  of  good  must 
nowadays  be  reducible  to  dollars,  water  in 
the  rivers  will  pay  better  dividends  than 
water  in  stock. 


WHERE  IS  THE  WEST? 

IT  would  be  easier  to  tell  where  is  the 
East.  That  is  always  toward  the  At- 
lantic. Boston  is  East  to  Cleveland; 
Chicago  is  East  to  Colorado,  and  every- 
thing this  side  of  the  Cascade  Mountains 
is  East  to  the  Pacific  Coast.  It  almost 
amounts  to  this:  the  West  is  where  a  man  is; 
the  East  is  where  he  or  his  father  came  from. 
So  it  comes  to  pass  that  the  West  has  no 
fixed  geographical  limits  like  the  South  and 
New  England.  It  is  something  more  than 
a  geographical  term.  Like  Boston,  it  is  a 
state  of  mind.  There  are  mountains  and 
rivers  and  oceans  within  the  limits  of 
which  this  state  of  mind  is  preeminently  to 
be  found,  but  it  is  to  be  recognized  in  other 
regions  as  well.  You  can  tell  a  Westerner 
as  you  can  tell  a  Southerner,  sometimes  by 
his  speech,  always  by  his  attitude  toward 
life. 


The    West    means    Americans    who    are 

186 


EXTENSION  OF  DEMOCRACY      187 

controlled  by  certain  ideas  and  motives. 
But  American  does  not  mean  Anglo-Saxon 
beyond  the  Alleghenies.  It  is  never, 
strictly  speaking,  a  matter  of  descent;  but 
this  is  doubly  true  of  that  great  region 
where  blood  and  ideas  and  habits  of  every 
people  under  the  sun  are  fusing  into  a  new 
race.  Inevitably  the  West  is  cosmopolitan. 
With  such  an  origin  it  could  not  be  other- 
wise. Provincialism  in  any  arrogant  sense 
of  the  term  you  will  not  find  outside  of  the 
\thirteen  original  States  of  the  Union.  On 
the  prairies  too  many  men  have  succeeded 
where  according  to  all  precedent  they 
ought  to  have  failed  for  anyone  to  claim  a 
proprietary  right  in  omniscience.  Lacking 
that,  however  convinced  it  may  be  of  its 
own  superiority,  the  West  is  tolerant,  and 
the  Westerner  is  at  home  everywhere. 

The  West  is  a  synonym  of  vitality.  No 
region  knows  larger  zest  in  life.  Whether 
it  be  in  farming  or  in  literature  it  finds  the 
world  full  of  novelty.  That  is  one  reason 
why  it  produces  so  many  novelists.  All 
stories  may  have  been  told  long  ago,  but 
the  West  has  not  yet  found  it  out.  There 
are  regions  in  the  United  States  which,  like 


188     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

the  moon,  are  dead,  but  reflect  light  they 
do  not  originate.  There  are  others  whose 
energy  is  parasitic;  they  grow  on  the  suc- 
cesses of  other  men.  But  the  West  is  crea- 
tion personified.  It  has  killed  the  buffalo 
to  make  way  for  cows  and  sheep.  It  has 
replaced  Indian  wigwams  with  cities.  It 
has  made  the  prairies  feed  the  world.  Is  it 
any  wonder  that  it  is  dead  in  earnest?  An 
empire  of  wheat  and  corn  does  not  suggest 
late  dinners  and  late  rising.  And  is  it  any 
wonder  that  its  hope  is  as  intense  as  its 
vitality?  The  past  tense  would  disappear 
in  the  West  if  it  were  not  for  its  annual 
New  England  dinners! 


And  the  West  is  also  a  synonym  of 
democracy — not  the  democracy  of  the 
doctrinaire  who  worships  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  and  keeps  "servants,"  but 
that  democracy  of  practice  which  sees  a 
partner  in  every  man  and  woman  who  is 
accomplishing  something.  Pioneers  may 
not  always  be  fraternal,  but  they  still  call 
each  other  by  their  Christian  names.  They 
;m-  still  too  close  to  nature  and  still  too 


EXTENSION  OF  DEMOCRACY      180 

possessed  of  the  enthusiasm  which  belongs 
to  men  who  have  conquered  in  a  hand-to- 
hand  battle  with  nature  to  bother  with 
social  distinctions.  It  is  expected  that 
every  man  will  work.  The  unemployed, 
whether  rich  or  poor,  migrate. 


The  cowboy  is  disappearing  and  the 
miners  are  forming  trusts.  The  old  West 
with  its  romance  is  all  but  past.  There 
will  never  be  another  Bret  Harte  any  more 
than  there  will  be  another  Daniel  Boone. 
The  West,  with  its  boundless  interest  in 
life,  with  its  passion  for  creation,  and  with 
its  democracy,  is  still  new.  The  visitor 
from  the  East  finds  it  crude,  often  frankly 
materialistic  in  its  judgments.  But  the 
crudity  is  disappearing  in  actual  achieve- 
ment, and  the  materialism,  if  more  frank, 
is  less  treacherous  than  that  of  high  finance.4 
The  West  is  human  and  so  imperfect,  but 
it  is  sincere.  It  is  rough,  but  it  is  being 
educated.  As  a  locality  it  may  be  shift- 
ing, but  as  a  state  of  mind  it  is  America  in 
the  making. 

For  it  is  full  to  the  brim  with  democracy. 


SAFEGUARDING  A  NEW  EPOCH 

TT  is  not  every  man  who  can  read  the 
•*•  signs  of  the  times.  Some  of  us  are 
blind  and  some  of  us  have  hallucinations. 
But  one  thing  is  plain  even  to  the  blindest. 
The  past  few  years  in  the  United  States 
have  closed  one  epoch  and  have  begun  a 
new. 

Even  more  than  we  have  been  aware, 
democracy  itself  has  been  on  trial.     The 
country   has   faced   a   fundamental    issue: 
Are  laws  to  be  obeyed,  or  are  they  to  be  ! 
evaded? 


It  is  one  of  the  penalties  of  reform  that 
men  always  forget  the  pit  out  of  which 
they  have  been  dug.  The  condition  of 
affairs  a  few  years  ago  was  one  that  played 
into  the  hands  of  the  Socialists,  if  not  of 
the  revolutionists.  We  were  turning  out 
laws  by  the  hundreds,  and  the  lawyers 
were  making  a  living  telling  us  how  not  to 
obey  them.  We  believed  that  great  aggre- 

190 


EXTENSION  OP  DEMOCRACY      191 

gations  of  wealth  were  all  but  beyond  the 
reach  of  law,  and  knew  that  the  miasma  of 
graft  was  ruining  our  business  health. 

The  plain  American  citizen  was  losing 
faith  in  the  ability  of  the  republic  to  grow 
rich  and  remain  democratic. 

All  this  we  are  liable  to  forget  in  the 
excess  of  our  new  enthusiasm  for  civic 
righteousness. 


True,  we  are  by  no  means  saints  as  yet, 
but  we  have  begun  to  learn  the  meaning 
of  the  word  "law." 

Our  courts  are  not  all  they  should  be, 
but  they  are  more  closely  watched  than 
they  were  ten  years  ago. 

Our  Congressmen  are  too  friendly  with 
lobbyists,  but  they  are  more  susceptible 
than  formerly  to  public  opinion. 

Business  men  maybe  are  no  more  honest 
than  they  were  once,  but  they  are  less  in- 
clined to  play  upon  the  brink  of  dishonesty. 

This  new  epoch  is  not  the  work  of  any 
one  man,  although  Ex-President  Roosevelt  ^ 
deserves  gratitude  for  his  share  in  bringing 
it  to  pass.    It  is  a  new  phase  in  the  develop- 


192     THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 

ment  of  democracy  to  be  seen  in  national, 
municipal,  and  even  State  governments. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  men  who  have 
played  fast  and  loose  with  the  law  should 
think  themselves  aggrieved.  A  man  with 
privileges  that  he  has  come  to  believe  are 
vested  rights,  dislikes  to  be  told  that  he 
must  bow  to  a  higher  law  than  that  which 
his  attorney  formulates. 

Nobody  likes  to  be  less  important  than 
:  he  has  been. 

But  it  would  be  worse  than  idle  to 
attempt  to  bring  back  the  past.  It  would 
be  sheer  foolishness. 

Unless  we  utterly  mistake  the  temper  of 
the  country  at  large,  we  have  reached  a 
very  simple  alternative:  Is  the  American 
people  strong  enough  to  regulate  the  ad- 
ministration of  great  corporations,  or  are 
we  to  have  fastened  upon  us  an  oligarchy 
from  which  there  is  no  release  except 
through  revolution? 

And  there  is  no  question  that  the  coun- 
try chooses  the  first  alternative. 

,*        ,*        # 
The  era  of  muckraking  has  closed.     It 


EXTENSION  OF  DEMOCRACY      193 

was  strenuous,  indeed  over-strenuous,  but  it 
did  its  work.  The  era  of  respect  for  law,  or, 
at  least,  of  fear  of  law,  has  dawned.  That 
which  in  other  days  has  been  accomplished 
only  by  bloodshed  is  being  accomplished  by 
the  processes  of  democracy. 

The  good  work  will  continue.  We  are 
not  going  back.  We  are  going  forward. 

Just  how  far  we  shall  go,  and  how  rap- 
idly, and  by  what  means,  will  depend 
largely  upon  whether  men  who  are  at 
present  in  control  of  great  industrial  and 
financial  institutions  are  able  to  read  the 
signs  of  the  times  and  govern  themselves 
accordingly. 

If  they  wish  to  democratize  privilege 
without  contest,  they  will  reap  the  peaceable 
fruits  of  justice.  But,  willingly  or  unwill- 
ingly, democratize  them  they  must! 


8antaBa< 


I   I 


THE  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

Santa  Barbara 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW. 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000865247     1 


